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MARXISM VERSUS 
SOCIALISM 



By 
VLADIMIR G. SIMKHOVITCH, Ph.D. 

Associate Professor of Economic History 
at Columbia University 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1913 



*'V 




Copyright, 1913, 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



Published June, 1Q13 



THE QUINN A BODEN CO. PRESS 
RAHWAY, N. J. 



/^S^ 



iCi,A350270 



TO THE MEMORY 

OF 

c. w. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction . . . v 

I. Popular Misunderstandings About the R6le of 

Marx's Theory of Value i 

II. Marxian Socialism in Outline 13 

III. The Economic Interpretation of History . . 25 

IV. Concerning Concentration of Production in In- 

dustry AND Agriculture 47 

v. cbncerning the disappearance of the middle 

Class 70 

VI. The Theory of Increasing Misery .... 98 

VII. Data Relating to the Status of the Wage-earner 128 

VIII. Class-struggle Conceptions. Forerunners of Marx 147 

IX. The Marxian Class- struggle Doctrine . , , 185 

X. The Theory of Crises 225 

XI. The Social Revolution and the Inevitable 

Cataclysm 241 

XII. The Collapse of Marx's Theory of Value . . 254 

XIII. Marx's Attitude Towards Eternal Justice. Con- 
cluding Remarks 278 

Index .......... 295 



INTRODUCTION 

The reader who is interested in the spread and de- 
velopment of sociaHsm here and abroad has undoubt- 
edly noticed that the great growth of socialism in 
recent years has been accompanied by considerable 
changes in policy and doctrine. In the main, present- 
day political socialism is more or less Marxian, but 
the word socialist may mean anything. The Amer- 
ican socialist, for example, will tell you that Marxism 
cind socialism are synonymous, but what he will advo- 
cate is but partial state capitalism, or state ownership 
of the trusts. The German revisionist and the French 
reformist claim to be the spiritual heirs of Marx, and 
yet they have no illusions about the social revolution 
and the inevitable sudden collapse of the capitalist 
mode of production. Some revisionists, in fact, have 
grave doubts even as to the desirability of the expro- 
priation by the state of all means of production. 
The syndicalists, on the other hand, who claim to be 
the only ones that act in accordance with Marx's 
class-struggle doctrine economically interpreted, have 
repudiated the political struggle. The rank and 
file of the American and German socialist parties 
claim to be Marxists, but even they are far less ortho- 
dox than they claim to be. They have toned down 



vi INTRODUCTION 

their Marxian doctrine as they have hberalized their 
poHcies. They have refrained from sacrilegiously re- 
vising Marx as a whole, but they have piously rein- 
terpreted parts of his teaching — all with much loyalty 
to the memory of Marx, but with little respect for 
the intellectual consistency of the doctrine. 

This situation is more than interesting, it is im- 
portant. What is the cause of these changes? Why 
is it that so many of the socialist thinkers are so ardu- 
ously revising and reinterpreting their traditional doc- 
trine, while others are grasping for a new one ? This 
book, I believe, answers the question. The Marxian 
doctrine, which helped the development of socialism 
throughout the world as no other doctrine ever did, 
has turned into a fetter, a trap, a pitfall from which 
there seems to be no escape. In the same compelling 
manner in which Marxism once assured its followers 
of the inevitability of the cataclysm and social revolu- 
tion, precisely so does it indicate to-day their impossi- 
bility. 

Marxian socialism, or " scientific " socialism, as 
Marx called it, differed fundamentally from the vari- 
ous types of socialism that preceded it. Marx ridi- 
culed the invention of an ideal social organization, 
a perfect state. The fundamental proposition upon 
which Marx's socialism rested was his economic inter- 
pretation of history. This conception implied that the 
political and legal organization of society is absolutely 
dependent upon its economic structure, that our future 



INTRODUCTION vii 

depends entirely upon existing economic tendencies, 
that no social revolution could socialize scattered and 
decentralized industry, nor could legions of small 
property-owners be expropriated. On the other hand,X^ 
no power on earth could prevent socialism, i.e., the \ 
expropriation of the means of production by society 
as a whole, i^'the economic tendencies were what 
Marx thought them to be when he was working out 
his doctrine. 

Certain economic tendencies were, according to 
Marx, inherent in capitalism. These tendencies could 
but lead to the destruction of capitalism. They were : 
rapid concentration of production in industry and 
agriculture and the disappearance of small industrial 
and commercial undertakings; concentration of wealth 
in the hands of an ever diminishing group of mag- 
nates of capital, accompanied by the complete disap- 
pearance of the middle class and general proletariza- 
tion of the masses; increasing misery of the 
proletariat accompanied by an ever increasing class 
struggle; commercial crises of ever increasing magni- 
tude, due 'to" overproduction. Such were the tend- 
encies that were to lead to the complete collapse of 
capitalism, to the social revolution and the dictator- 
ship of the proletariat. Under that dictatorship the 
means of production were to be expropriated and the 
socialist commonwealth inaugurated. 

Before our law and our industry had more or less 
adjusted themselves to the introduction of machinery, 



viii INTRODUCTION 

all these tendencies actually existed. But when Marx 
formulated his doctrine, he failed to allow for counter 
tendencies, for society's ability to adjust itself to the 
Hew' situation without a revolution. 

It must be borne in mind that Marx did not advo- 
cate socialism because he believed the socialist state to 
be good. Socialism, in his opinion, was simply inev- 
itable because of the economic tendencies inherent in 
capitalism. Were not such tendencies at work, socialism 
would have been an empty Utopian dream, utterly 
lacking an economic basis and hence impossible of 
realization. 

This is the keynote of Marxian socialism. Si non, 
non, is Marx's own proposition. Our contention is 
that nearly all the tendencies upon which Marx 
counted have failed him, and, consequently, that 
from the point of view of Marx's own economic in- 
terpretation of history the social revolution is but a 
revolutionary Utopia. 

It is quite true that the concentration of industry is 
very great, and there is little doubt in my mind that 
our gigantic industrial organizations will before long 
be effectively controlled in some way or other by gov- 
ernmental agencies. But even in this country, where 
industrial concentration has gone much further than 
elsewhere, it falls far short of the expectations of 
Marx. Constantly hearing of the mammoth combina- 
tion, we quite naturally fail to notice the multitudes 
of petty enterprises which, humble though they may 



INTRODUCTION ix 

be, exist and flourish. Furthermore, Marx was quite 
mistaken in assuming that centralization of industry 
and concentration of management result in concen- 
tration of wealth, the disappearance of the middle 
class, and the final concentration of all capital in the 
hands of a very few magnates. The numbers of the 
rich and well-to-do have increased and are increasing 
by leaps and bounds. There has arisen a vast legion 
of stockholders who are the veritable national guard 
of capital. Politically they are anything but a negligi- 
ble quantity. Nor have the small farmers disap- 
peared from the face of the earth; on the contrary, 
wherever farming becomes intensive there is a tend- 
ency towards decentralization. A socialist state with 
the farmer outside it is a conception that can rest 
comfortably only in the head of an American socialist. 
In Chapter IV the reader will find that for Marx and 
Engels, to whom thinking was not an irrelevant for- 
eign tradition, the disappearance of the farmer class 
was economically and politically a conditio sine qua 
non of the very possibility of a socialist common- 
wealth. Nor is the theory of increasing misery at 
all tenable. Indeed it is admitted that misery is de- 
creasing instead of increasing. The condition of the 
working classes has greatly improved, — not as much, 
to be sure, as we should have desired, but enough to 
show that Marx was quite mistaken in assuming that 
the accumulation of misery must correspond to the 
accumulation of capital; that, to use Marx's own 



X INTRODUCTION 

words, " accumulation of wealth at one pole is there- 
fore at the same time accumulation of misery, agony 
of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degrada- 
tion, at the opposite pole." (See Chapter VI.) 

In Chapter X of the present study the reader will 
discover how striking a role Marx allotted to com- 
mercial crises. They were to extend in magnitude and 
increase in frequency and momentum until the entire 
capitalist structure should crash and tumble. This 
cataclysm, which according to Marx is already over- 
due, was to result from that anarchy in production 
which characterizes the competitive system, which, he 
said, cannot produce without overproducing on an 
ever more gigantic scale. A dramatic and picturesque 
theory it was. As the revelation of a prophet it may 
still find believers, but as a scholarly theory it had to 
be abandoned even by Marx's own followers. In the 
third volume of Marx's Capital there is a frank admis- 
sion that with the extension of the world market and 
quicker means of communication and transportation 
the tendency toward crises of overproduction has 
greatly diminished. Thus did the doctrine of the in- 
evitable collapse of our capitalist system come to grief. 

It is obvious to-day that the economic tendencies 
upon which Marx counted have played him false, and 
from the point of view of Marx's own economic inter- 
pretation of history the expectations and hopes of 
revolutionary socialism can hardly materialize. The 
situation has become quite evident to the clear minds 



INTRODUCTION xi 

within the sociaHst movement. This explains the re- 
visionist, reformist, syndicalist and " back to Kant " 
socialist movements, besides many others that have 
recently arisen. To-day the social movement through- 
out the world is in one sense but a quest for a new 
possible meaning of the word socialism. 

So-called scientific socialism is bankrupt. Socialists 
to-day have the alternative of becoming plain social 
reformers or of being out-and-out Utopians. Not so, 
they say; even if all the mistakes of scientific socialism 
are admitted, its kernel remains sound and victory is 
assured. Why? Because, whereas the Utopians were 
dreamers, Marx exposed class exploitation and taught 
class struggle, and under this sign a class-conscious 
proletariat will be victorious, and scientific socialism 
will win where Utopias failed. Such statements we 
hear very often, and all that can be said in reply is 
this : If the a-_ssertion of Marx^ and Engels that all 
history is a history of class struggles is correct, there 
must have been quite a bit of class-consciousness in 
history before Marx; and yet these class struggles 
Mid not lead to socialism. With regard to so-called" 
exploitation, our friends the socialists are making a 
mistake in looking down upon their unsuccessful fore- 
runners, the Utopians. In the last chapter of Thomas 
More's Utopia, from the title of which, if I am not 
mistaken, the word Utopian has been derived, our 
friends will find the following observation: 

" Therefore I must say, that as I hope for mercy. 



xii INTRODUCTION 

I can have no other notion of all the other govern- 
ments that I see or know, than that they are a con- 
spiracy of the richer sort, who, on pretense of man- 
aging the public, do only pursue their private ends, 
and devise all the ways and arts that they can find 
out; first that they may, without danger, preserve all 
that they have so ill acquired, and then, that they may 
engage the poorer sort to toil and labor for them, at 
as low rates as is possible, and oppress them as they 
please." ^ 

The scientific socialists have forgotten that More 
the Utopian made such a statement. They would 
hardly have forgotten if it had materially affected 
economic conditions. It did not. Why, then, should 
we expect so much from Marx's formulation of pre- 
cisely the same thought? Is it not rather Utopian to 
expect so much in the way of fundamental changes 
in our social institutions from a formula, a thought, a 
conception, an idea ? 

No doubt it will be pointed out to us that the under- 
lying economic conditions have changed since the days 
of More's Utopia. That is quite true; but to contend 
that further changes are to be expected because of our 
economic conditions is to shift the argument and return 
again to present-day economic tendencies, which have 
ceased to be encouraging from the Marxian point of 
view. 

^ More, Utopia (Bishop Burnet's translation), London, 1684, 
p. 201. 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

Of the various doctrines of Marx, the economic in- 
terpretation of history has suffered least from the 
ravages of time and of criticism. It is a very im- 
portant theory, and it marked a great advance in 
historical methodology and social philosophy. But 
only a layman could regard this method as a perfect 
instrument. Much as I admire the theory, as perhaps 
the most robust ever advanced, it is at the same time 
the crudest and most unfinished doctrine in the field 
of social philosophy. 

For, to begin with, there is no such thing as one 
economic interpretation of a given historical event; 
many interpretations are possible. One man may look 
upon certain economic conditions as the cause of the 
event, while another will find the cause in quite dif- 
ferent economic aspects. The past presents nearly as 
varied a selection and almost as complete a chaos of 
economic influences as does the present, and therefore, 
even on the basis of the strictest economic interpre- 
tation, many combinations of causation are quite pos- 
sible. Again, how can we determine, quantitatively 
and qualitatively, the strength of these economic influ- 
ences with which we are dealing? And even assum- 
ing that historical laws have the same validity as the 
laws of mechanics, how much, after all, can they tell 
us? Every hovel and every bridge and every cathe- 
dral stands because it is constructed in accordance 
with mechanical laws. But do mechanical laws deter- 
mine the designs of these various structures? Sim- 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

ilarly within the laws of economic cohesion an endless 
variety of historical designs and structures is possible. 
Furthermore, we are apt to forget that the economic 
interpretation of history can explain only the changes 

i 

Hhat occur in things, never the things themselves. It 
Imight explain a change in religious doctrine, for in- 
stance, but never faith itself. 

And if this doctrine, as a historical method of deal- 
ing with the past, where the game is played with open 
cards, is beset with such difficulties, how could one 
seriously expect much from it where the future is 
concerned ? I am indebted to Professor Goodnow for 
an illustration of the uncertainty of our ordinary po- 
litical forecasts. As we all know, the democratic 
development of our form of government has been 
attributed to the economic preeminence of the cities, 
the concentration of industrial population, etc.; and 
because of these modern economic conditions we ex- 
pect still greater democratization of our governmental 
institutions. But it so happened that on September 
12, 1900, a gale drove the waves of the Gulf over the 
city of Galveston. In sheer despair all traditional 
political theory of separation of powers, etc., was 
abandoned, and to meet an extraordinary situation a 
commission form of government was adopted by the 
city. This entirely unforeseen and unexpected com- 
mission form of city government has since swept the 
country, one city after another adopting it throughout 
the United States. Of course it is easy to interpret 



INTRODUCTION xv 

this phenomenon economically a posteriori, but no 
economic interpreter could ever have foreseen so curi- 
ous and extraordinary a development. 

Because of this uncertainty of the things of the 
future, the v^riter of this book studiously refrains 
from prophecy. There is no assertion here that so- 
cialism is impossible in the future. The book deals 
with the well-known doctrine that because of such 
and such economic conditions social revolution is inevi- 
table. Facts and figures show us that actual condi- 
tions do not warrant any such assumption. Neither 
with the naked eye nor with the help of such instru- 
ments as science may lend us can the socialist state 
be seen on the horizon. What may happen in the 
distant future we do not know; it lies absolutely and 
entirely beyond the realm of our knowledge, in a 
region where faith and imagination may reign 
supreme. 

I cannot close this introduction without expressing 
my deep gratitude tO' those of my friends who have 
helped me in my struggle with English expression. I 
am especially indebted to Mrs. Simkhovitch, who, I 
fear, has taken time from her much more important 
work to lend me assistance. Both the form and the 
substance of the chapters relating to the class struggle 
were revised by that realistic genius, my late friend 
Miss Carola Woerishoffer. My friend and colleague, 
Professor Munroe Smith, as editor of the Political 
Science Quarterly, where this book first appeared in 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

1908-12, has taken endless trouble in making it more 
or less readable, — for which I am profoundly grate- 
ful to him. 

Vladimir G. Simkhovitch. 

Greenwich House, 
New York City. 



MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

CHAPTER I 

POPULAR MISUNDERSTANDINGS ABOUT 
THE ROLE OF MARX'S THEORY OF 
VALUE 

The role which socialism is playing in the modem 
world and the extent to which the socialistic army 
in all civilized countries is marching under the banner 
of Karl Marx give to the body of doctrines which 
bear his name a unique position in social science. Even 
if the Marxian system be regarded as a tissue of 
errors, the fact that millions of men accept it makes 
it significant. It has, however, another claim upon 
the attention of the economist. Had Marxism failed 
to win a single adherent, it would still have been 
necessary for every serious student of economic theory 
to endeavor to understand it, for it contains a chal- 
lenge that can be neither ignored nor evaded. 

The literature of protest against Marxism is already 
vast, yet, with the notable exception of such writings 
as those of Bohm-Bawerk, Seligman, Sombart and 
Stammler, who have dealt with special aspects of 
the system, the bulk of that literature proves con- 



2 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

clusively to the well-informed reader that reason is 
but a fig-leaf for emotion. Too obvious in most in- 
stances is the critic's desire to emulate St. George 
and slay the dragon, even if personal modesty clothes 
the brave onslaught in the humble garb of scientific 
research.^ With these critics emotions run riot. 
They have in their zeal attempted the impossible: to 
kill the dragon without seeing him. That even St. 
George could not have done.^ Such criticism, carried 
on for two generations, has naturally established a 
tradition : a man of straw has been constructed for 
the express use of Marx's critics. 

Of the current misconceptions of the Marxian sys- 
tem, the most fundamental and most general is the 
opinion that the labor-theory of value is the corner- 
stone of Marxian socialism. From this is derived 
the equally erroneous opinion that Marx's demand for 
social justice stands or falls with his theory of value. 

^ Marx, who, as Pierre Leroux once said about him, *' had a 
keen understanding of the bad side of human nature," has 
given to the motives of his critics a somewhat unkind interpre- 
tation. " In the domain of political economy," he writes, "'' free 
scientific inquiry meets not only the same enemies as in all other 
domains; the peculiar nature of the material it deals with sum- 
mons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and 
mahgnant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private 
interest." Marx, Capital, fourth English edition (London, 1891), 
p. xix. 

^ As early as 1895 Adolph Wagner pointed out that most of 
the critics of so-called scientific socialism had shown that they 
had not the least conception of what they were talking about. 
See Die akademische Nationalokonomie und der Socialismus 
(Berlin, 1895)5 RE- 22, 2a. 



POPULAR MISUNDERSTANDINGS 3 

Or, as a recent Marx critic, Mr. J. E. Le Rossignol, 
professor of economics in the University of Denver, 
puts it : " Orthodox socialists are deeply concerned to 
prove it true, for if it can be shown that all values 
are created by labor alone, it must surely follow that 
all should belong to the hand and brain that created 
them." ^ This ethical interpretation of the Marxian 
theory of value and the desire to base socialism upon 
this theory are characteristic of the bulk of the aca- 
demic literature about Marx. Thus Professor Fox- 
well writes about Professor Menger : '' For him 
[Menger] Marx, not Ruskin, is the type of the social- 
ist. Socialism in this sense, the only one really dis- 
tinctive, has been well defined by Mr. Rae, in terms 
which Dr. Menger might have drafted himself : ' It 
is not a theory of the state's action, but a theory of 
the state's action founded on a theory of the laborer's 
right — at bottom a demand for social justice — that 
every man shall possess the whole produce of his 
labor.' " * Giving to the Marxian system this inter- 
pretation. Professor Menger was logically justified in 
making the courageous statement that " Marx is far 
inferior to Thompson, so that the work of the latter 
may be regarded as the foundation stone of social- 
ism." ^ This statement is exceedingly interesting. It 

' Le Rossignol, Othodox Socialism, A Criticism (New York, 

1907), p. 15. 

* H. S. FoxWELL, Introduction to Anton Menger, Right to 
the Whole Produce of Labor (London, 1899), p. xvii. 

° Menger, op. cit., p. 102. 



4 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

proves that by making an ethical labor-theory of value 
the spring and center of Marxism socialism, one eo 
ipso wipes out the difference between the sentimental, 
Utopian socialism of the first half of the last century 
and modern so-called scientific socialism. Most of 
the academic writers have attributed to Marxian 
theory precisely this sentimental character, but without 
drawing the logical conclusions. 

What meaning then, the economist will justly ask, 
has Marx's theory of value? The answer is simple. 
Marx's theory of value occupies in his economic sys- 
tem the same position that the theory of value has 
occupied or has tried to occupy in many other systems. 
The classical systems of political economy were all 
metaphysics of commodities, philosophies of produc- 
tion and circulation. In Marx's metaphysics of pro- 
duction the theory of value occupies the same central 
position as the Svihstanz-prohlem in philosophical sys- 
tems. This analogy is striking even in the phraseology 
of Marx. Marx is a realist, even a materialist, and 
is consistently, passionately, and naively so; but where 
he is dealing with a problem the very existence of 
which could not be recognized by a strict and consistent 
realism, he has to fall back' on mediaeval scholasticism. 
Observe his language : '' i quarter corn = x cwt. iron. 
What does this equation tell us? // tells us that in 
two different things — in i quarter of corn and x cwt. 
of iron — there exists in equal quantities something 
common to both. The two things must therefore he 



POPULAR MISUNDERSTANDINGS 5 

equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor 
the other. . . . Let us now consider the residue of 
each of these products; it consists of the same unsub- 
stantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homoge- 
neous human labor, of labor-power expended without 
regard to the mode of its expenditure. All that these 
things now tell us is that human labor-power has been 
expended in their production, that labor is embodied 
in them. When looked at as crystals of this social 
substance, common to them all, they are Values." ^ 
That is written by Marx the materialist and sworn to 
by Engels — the same Engels who was so vastly 
amused by Kant's '' Ding an sich/' and who instructs 
us that chemistry in its recent progress has put an 
end to such mysterious entities.'' 

Whatever the faults and merits of Marx's theory 
of value may be, it was not intended as an ethical 
basis for socialism, but as a means of interpreting 
economic phenomena. It is quite true that his theory 
of value is the central theory upon which his economic 
analysis of the capitalistic system rests, — in short, the 
foundation of his economic doctrine; but this theory 
plays no role whatsoever in his socialistic doctrine, 
which purports to be nothing more than a demonstra- 
tion that socialism is inevitable. 

Marx's socialistic doctrine is intensely realistic. He ; 

* Marx, Capital, English translation, pp. 3, 4, 5. The italics 
are mine. 

^Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (Chicago, 1905), 
p. xvii. 



6 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

describes the existing economic phenomena and argues 
that the sum of these phenomena is bound to result in 
the expropriation of the means of production, in so- 
cialism. In this argument he deals with the economic 
phenomena historically, i.e., he does not analyze them 
philosophically, but treats them as existing powers, 
and he expounds their political and social effects, 
which he regards as necessary and unavoidable. The 
key to his socialist doctrine is the economic interpreta- 
tion of history with the class-struggle doctrine follow- 
ing in its train. Accordingly, the doctrine of modern 
so-called " scientific " socialism is found in all its com- 
pleteness in the Communist Manifesto^ which contains 
no reference to any theory of value. It is, on the other 
hand, when Marx is at work analyzing and explaining 
the economic phenomena of capitalistic society that 
his ingenious theory of surplus value is elaborated. 
This theory is to him the key-word by which we are 
enabled to decipher and comprehend all economic phe- 
nomena. It must always be remembered that, from 
Marx's viewpoint, the actual economic phenomena are 
motive powers of society determining its future. No 
analysis or interpretation of these phenomena, whether 
it be scientific or unscientific, increases or diminishes 
their sovereign power. Interpretation affects them 
no more and no less than a volume on astronomy af- 
fects the solar system. 

How then did it happen that it was the theory of 
surplus value that primarily drew the fire of the 



POPULAR MISUNDERSTANDINGS 7 

learned economists ; and why did most of them seem to 
think that in disproving that theory they had dehvered 
a mortal blow to modern socialism? First of all, per- 
haps, because certain socialist agitators tried to make 
emotional capital out of the theory of surplus value. 
This circumstance cannot, however, serve as an excuse 
for scholars who have undertaken to criticise Marxian 
Socialism. Even if they deemed it unnecessary to 
study Marx's own writings, they could have learned 
from many a propagandist leaflet ^ what role the theory 
of surplus value actually plays in the Marxian system. 
Secondly — and this probably furnishes in most cases 
the truer explanation of their misconceptions — they 
were not sufliciently impressed by the peculiarities of 
Marxian socialism to be disposed to draw a sharp line 

* For instance, see Paul Fischer, Die Marx'sche Werttheorie, 
Berliner Arbeiterbibliothek, Serie i, Heft 9 (Verlag des 
Vorwdrts, 1893), pp. Z3y 34- "The bourgeois economists have 
declared that Marx's theory of value is the bulwark by which 
socialism must stand or fall. ... In almost all criticism of the 
fundamental principles of Marx's system the question of the 
correctness or incorrectness of the theory of value is reduced 
to the alternative of either throwing over Marx's theory of 
value or of throwing over society ! . . . They foist this meaning 
of theirs on Marx sans fagon. As they themselves imagine that 
a theory of value can have direct influence on the development of 
society, without more ado they presuppose the same idea on the 
"part of Marx. Taking their own general economic point of view 
as the measure of Marx's theory, they commit the colossal mis- 
take of considering the theory of value not only as the pre- 
requisite of his criticism of bourgeois economy, hut also as the 
foundation of his socialistic claims. They therefore entirely mis- 
take the role which the theory of value plays." The italics are 
mine. 



8 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

between the socialism of Marx and the sociaHsm of 
his predecessors. It seemed to them, probably, like 
making two bites of a cherry: socialism is socialism, 
and its variations are but differences in shade. All 
pre-Marxian socialism was distinctly ethical; every 
peroration against capitalism contained or implied an 
appeal for social justice. Whenever the word " ex- 
ploitation " was used, they accordingly thought them- 
selves justified in looking for the usual end of the | 
sermon. When Marx, in his Capital^ describes the de- 
velopment of the English factory system, he does not 
mince matters. He makes the respectable English 
blue-books, to use Bernard Shaw's phrase, convict 
capital " of wholesale spoliation, murder and compul- 
sory prostitution; of plague, pestilence and famine; 
of battle, murder and sudden death." ® The citation 
of those deplorable facts and the energy of Marx's lan- 
guage struck some gentle scientific souls as an appeal 
for socialism. Add the circumstance that the first 
part of Marx's bulky volume was devoted to the elab- 
oration of his theory of surplus value — a theory any- 
thing but complimentary to the capitalistic organization 
of society — and how could there be any doubt that 
Marx's doctrine is an ethical appeal for justice, and 
that the theory of value is its foundation? And if 
the Marxian theory of value be the foundation of a 
social movement that is growing so rapidly, then to 

^ Fabian Essays in Socialism, edited by G. Bernard Shaw, 

pp. 220, 221. 



POPULAR MISUNDERSTANDINGS 9 

destroy socialism one has only to destroy the labor- 
theory of value. Thus it is that we are blessed with 
so large a literature on the Marxian theory of value. 
In vain did Marx's co-worker and literary executor, 
Frederick Engels, protest against the putting of such 
an interpretation upon the theory of value. As early 
as 1884 Engels wrote : '' This application of the Ri- 
cardian theory, according to which the whole social 
product belongs to the sole producers, the workers, 
as their product, leads directly to communism. This 
theory, however, as Marx has pointed out, is from an 
economic point of view formally false, since it is an 
application of ethics to economics. According to the 
laws of the bourgeois economy the greater part of 
the product does not belong to the workers who have 
produced it. Now if we should say that it is unjust 
that this should be so, in the first place this does not 
concern economics. All that we can say is that this 
economic fact contradicts our moral sentiment. Upon 
this, therefore, Marx never based his communistic de- 
mands, but upon the inevitable catacylsm of the cap- 
italistic mode of production, which is going on before 
our eyes." ^" Marx himself emphasizes the same 
thought in different ways on all sorts of occasions. 
For example, in his Capital he criticises, in Proudhon, 
precisely that ethical attitude which the critics of 

*" Karl Marx, Das Elend der Philosophie, deutsche Ueber- 
setzung, 2te Auflage (Stuttgart, 1892) ; Friedrich Engels, Vor- 
wort, p. ix. 



lo MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

Marx attribute to Marx himself. " Proudhon begins 
by taking his ideal of justice, of * justice eternelle/ 
from the juridical relations that correspond to the 
production of commodities. . . . Then he turns 
around and seeks to reform the actual production of 
commodities, and the actual legal system correspond- 
ing thereto, in accordance with this ideal. What 
opinion should we have of a chemist who, instead of 
studying the actual laws of the molecular changes in 
the composition and decomposition of matter, and on 
that foundation solving definite problems, claimed to 
regulate the composition and decomposition of matter 
by means of the ' eternal ideas ' of ' naturalite ' and 
' affinite ' ? Do we really know any more about 
' usury,' when we say it contradicts ' justice eternelle/ 
' equite eternelle,' ' mutualite eternelle ' and other 
' verites eternelles ' than the fathers of the church did 
when they said it was incompatible with ^ grace eter- 
nelle,' ' foi eternelle ' and ^ la volonte eternelle de 
Dieu ' ? " ^1 Not only does Marx himself avoid appeal 
to ethical ideas, but the entire plan on which his sys- 
tem is constructed obliges him to take a non-ethical 
attitude toward economic phenomena. Does he not 
justify capitalism by emphasizing its absolute neces- 
sity? In the preface to his Capital he quotes with 
approval a Russian critic who has clearly apprehended 
his main idea. This critic tells us that Marx is trying 
to prove " both the necessity of the present order of 
^' Marx, Capital, English ed. (London, 1891), vol. i, p. 56. 



POPULAR MISUNDERSTANDINGS ii 

things and the necessity of another order into which 
the first must inevitably pass over, and this all the 
same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether 
they are conscious or unconscious of it. Marx treats 
the social movement as a process of natural history, 
governed by laws not only independent of human will, 
consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the con- 
trary, determining that will, consciousness and intelli- 
gence." ^^ How could such an attitude be reconciled 
with a plea for another social order on any moral 
ground, e.g., on the ground that the worker is not 
getting the whole produce of his labor ? ^^ 

*^ Ibid., pp. xxvii, xxviii. 

" Sombart was absolutely right in what he had to say about 
Professor Julius Wolf's book on Socialism, and some of his 
charges hold good as regards nearly the whole critical literature 
on Marx, not excepting the most recent publications. Special 
attention should be paid to the following paragraph in Sombart's 
criticism: "Wolf makes Marxism almost the sole object of his 
attack, although with fatal carelessness he nowhere clearly dis- 
tinguished it from other socialistic systems. The possibility of 
a correct understanding of any one of the principal Marxian 
doctrines, however, was destroyed as soon as the critics failed to 
realize the purely theoretical character of Marxism. In the fact 
that Wolf gives an ethical import to Marx's doctrine, makes it, 
to use a Marxian expression, ' monastic,' lies the TrpcJTov iIjevSos 
of all the critical deductions of the book in question. Wolf ought 
to have understood first and foremost that Marxism is distin- 
guished from all other socialistic systems (which in contrast to 
him I propose to sum up under the heading of ethical sociaHsm) 
by its anti-ethical tendency. In the entire Marxism from begin- 
ning to end there is not a particle of ethics and consequently 
no more of an ethical opinion than an ethical postulate. Marx 
maintains in no place either that the surplus value does not 
belong to the employer or that the workman ' has a right to 



12 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

the whole produce of his labor.' A great part of Wolf's 
criticism, however, consists in a disquisition to Marx on what 
is * proper ' and what is * improper ' in the present-day mode 
of production, and distribution of revenue. . . . And finally, to 
sum up, he says : * All theory and practice of socialism, accord- 
ing to the conception of socialism, presupposes the right to the 
whole product of labor.' Had Wolf added, ' with the exception 
of Marxism,' he would have hit upon the truth. By including 
Marxism he made his weightiest critical attacks futile." Braun's 
Archiv fur sosiale Gesetsgebung und Statistik, 1892, vol. v, pp. 
489, 490. 



\ 



CHAPTER II 
MARXIAN SOCIALISM IN OUTLINE 

" In Brussels," Marx writes, " where I was exiled 
by Guizot, I organized, together with Engels, W. 
Wolff and others, a German ' Arbeiterbildungsverein,' 
which still exists. We published at the same time a 
series of printed and lithographed pamphlets, in which 
we criticised mercilessly that mixture of French-Eng- 
lish socialism or communism with German philosophy 
which then formed the doctrine of the * Bund.' ^ In- 
stead of that we postulated scientific insight into 
the economic structure of civil society [burgerliche 
Gesellschaff] as the only defensible theoretical basis 
of socialism. We also explained, in a popular form, 
that it is not a question of putting through some 
Utopian system, but of taking a conscious part in the 
process of social transformation which is going on 
before our very eyes. ... In the manifesto written 
for workingmen I discarded all systems and put in 
their stead a critical insight into the conditions, prog- 

^ Marx is referring to the " Bund der Kommunisten." The 
history of that organization and an account of the relations of 
Marx and Engels to it may be found in Engels's preface to Karl 
Marx, Enthullungen iiber den Kommunistenprocess in K'oln 
(Nottingen-Ziirich, 1885), pp. 3-17- 

13 



14 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

ress and general results of the actual social move- 
ment." ^ This is Karl Marx's testimony in his own 
behalf as to the origin and scope of his socialistic doc- 
trine. What did he mean by a critical insight into the 
conditions of this social movement? What was the 
fundamental proposition of the Communist Manifesto, 
which is the first outline of modern scientific social- 
ism? Let us again listen to the testimony of one of 
the authors : " The Manifesto being our joint produc- 
tion," writes Engels, " I consider myself bound to state 
that the fundamental proposition which forms its 
nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition is : that in 
every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic 
production and exchange, and the social organization 
necessarily following from it, form the basis upon 
which is built up, and from which alone can be ex- 
plained, the political and intellectual history of that 
epoch." ^ And it is not merely for explanation of the 

'^ Karl Marx, Herr Vogt (London, i860), pp. 35, 42. 

^ Engels's preface to the Communist Manifesto, English edition 
(Chicago, Chas. H. Kerr and Company), p. 8. This conception 
of the economic interpretation of history was for the first time 
adequately formulated by Marx a decade after the appearance of 
the Manifesto in his Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, 
published in 1859. Those passages are so important that we 
quote them here in full : " In the social production which men 
carry on, they enter into definite relations that are indispensable 
and independent of their will ; these relations of production 
correspond to a definite stage of development of their material 
powers of production. The sum total of these relations of 
production constitutes the economic structure of society — the 
real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures 
and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. 



MARXIAN SOCIALISM IN OUTLINE 15 

past that we are to look to the mode of prod aetio^ 
and exchange ; for these processes now determine and 
will continue to detefrnine aU our intricate social rela- 
tions, all our ideal conceptions. With tliem lies our 
fate: they have decided upon our past and they will 
settle our future. The conditions and contingencies 

The mode of production in material life determines the general 
character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. 
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their ex- 
istence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines 
their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, 
the material forces of production in society come into conflict 
with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a 
legal expression for the same thing — with the property relations 
within which they had been at work before. From forms of 
development of the forces of production these relations turn 
into their fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution. 
With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense 
superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In consider- 
ing such transformations the distinction should always be made 
between the material transformation of the economic conditions 
of production, which can be determined with the precision of 
natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or 
philosophic — in short ideological — forms in which men become 
conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion 
of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so 
can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its 
own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must 
rather be explained from the contradictions of material life, 
from the existing conflict between the social forces of produc- 
tion and the relations of production. No social order ever 
disappears before all the productive forces for which there is 
room in it have been developed ; and new higher relations of 
production never appear before the material conditions of their 
existence have matured in the womb of the old society." Karl 
Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 
EngHsh translation by N. S. Stone, pp. 11, 12, 



i6 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

of social production have divided society into classes, 
and all the history of hitherto existing society is a 
history of class struggles. '' Freeman and slave, 
patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and 
journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood 
in constant opposition to one another, carried on an 
uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight — a fight 
that each time ended either in a revolutionary recon- 
struction of society at large or in the common ruin of 
the contending classes." * 

The modern '' bourgeois " society, according to 
Marx, has grown up on the ruins of the feudal society. 
The discovery and colonization of the new world, 1 
trade with the East Indies and the general develop- 
ment of the means of exchange gave to commerce and 
industry an impulse never before known. The feudal 
organization of society was too narrow to hold within 
its limits modern industry and commerce even in their 
infantile stages. The feudal restrictions were burst 
asunder. The rule of the aristocracy was pushed aside 
and the modern bourgeoisie took its place in political 
life. The bourgeoisie as a class has played a most 
revolutionary role. Just as conservation of the old 
mode of production was the condition of existence of 
the feudal society, so constant technical improvement, 
constant advance, constant revolutionizing of the in- 
struments of production have become capitalism's very 
breath of life. " The bourgeoisie has disclosed how 

* Communist Manifesto, p. 12. 



MARXIAN SOCIALISM IN OUTLINE 17 

it came to pass that the brutal display of vigor in the 
Middle Ages, which reactionists so much admire, found 
its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. 
It has been the first to show w^hat man's activity can 
bring about. It has accomplished wonders far sur- 
passing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts and 
Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that 
have put in the shade all former exoduses of nations 
and crusades." ^ The constant revolutionizing of pro- 
duction is accompanied by an uninterrupted agitation 
and disturbance and is followed by a constant change 
in social conditions — a circumstance which distin- 
guishes the capitalistic era from all other epochs in 
human history. No frozen relations, no venerable 
prejudices for our age! Prejudices have no chance 
to become rooted, opinions have no chance to ossify. 
They are swept away before they are antiquated in 
this whirlwind of industrial progress. Industry has 
lost its national character. The need of larger markets 
chases the capitalist over the surface of the globe; it 
forces him to settle everywhere, to establish connec- 
tions everywhere. On pain of extinction it compels 
nations to drop their ancient traditions and to adopt 
the capitalist mode of production and the bourgeois 
conception of the world. Cheap commodities batter 
down all Chinese walls, and the bourgeois creates a 
new world after his own image. Class issues and 
class struggles are therefore losing their national char- 

'^ Ibid., pp. 16, 17. 



i8 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

acter, they are becoming as cosmopolitan as the bour- 
geoisie and its capitaHst mode of production. The 
capitahstic centraHzation of means of production is 
bringing about centraHzation of the scattered popula- 
tion : it has brought the laboring masses into towns. 
The extensive use of machinery has stripped work of 
all its individual character; the laborer's personality 
fades in the factory, where he becomes a mere ap- 
pendix to the machine during the day; nor can his 
sense of separate existence be cultivated in the dingy 
tenement house quarters, where he is packed for the 
night. The more readily, therefore, do these multi- 
tudes merge into one solid class, the proletariat, con- 
scious of its separate class existence, with tasks, aims 
and destinies widely different from those of the bour- 
geoisie, the class that owns the means of production. 

The bourgeoisie, being, as we have seen, a highly 
progressive class, finds itself involved in constant po- 
litical struggles. In the early stages of its development 
it has to fight with the aristocracy for political su- 
premacy. Later on its finds itself involved in a strug- 
gle with those portions of the middle class whose 
interests have become antagonistic to the progress of 
industry. In all these struggles the bourgeoisie has 
to appeal to the laboring class, to the proletariat, for 
help and support. Thus the laboring class is drawn 
into the political arena. There it is supplied with the 
elements of political education — weapons which are 
destined to be turned against the ruling class. 



MARXIAN SOCIALISM IN OUTLINE 19 

But that is not all. The very progress of capitalist 
production and accumulation increases the numbers 
and the political strength of the proletarians and de- 
pletes the ranks of the natural defenders of capitalism. 
Property makes for conservatism; but industry and 
commerce rapidly destroy the property of the small 
tradespeople, shopkeepers, handicraftsmen and farm- 
ers. All these are doomed to sink into the proletariat, 
partly because they have not sufficient capital for the 
scale on which modern industry, commerce and agri- 
culture are carried on, partly because they are swamped 
by the competition of large capitalists, partly because 
their special skill is rendered worthless by modern 
methods of production. These proletarians, instead 
of rising with the progress of industry, sink deeper 
and deeper. In the past, we are told by the authors 
of the Communist Manifesto^ existence was assured 
to the oppressed classes, in order that the oppression 
might continue; they also had a chance to rise and 
thus raise their own class. The serf in the period of 
serfdom managed to raise himself to membership in 
the commune ; the burgher under feudal rule developed 
into the modern bourgeois. The proletariat, we are 
informed, has no such chances. *' The modern laborer, 
on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress 
of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the condi- 
tions of existence of his own class. He becomes a 
pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than 
population and wealth. And here it becomes evident 



20 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling 
class in society, and to impose its conditions of exist- 
ence upon society as an overriding law. It is unfit to 
rule, because it is incompetent to assure an existence 
to its slave within its slavery, because it cannot help 
letting him sink to such a state that it has to feed him 
instead of being fed by him." ^ 

Capitalism, we are told, is not only threatening the 
very life of the proletariat, it is undermining its own 
existence. Capitalistic society is rapidly approaching 
a complete cataclysm. Modern society, having called 
into existence unparalleled means of exchange and 
gigantic means of production, is like the sorcerer who 
can no longer cope with the powers of the nether 
world which his incantations have conjured up. For 
decades we have been witnessing a distinct rebellion 
of the modern forces of production against the con- 
ditions of production, i.e., property conditions, prop- 
erty relations. This rebellion finds expression in the 
periodical return of that modern epidemic, the com- 
mercial crisis, which is threatening more and more 
the whole bourgeois society. And all the misery that 
accompanies such a crisis is due to overproduction. 
The masses of the people are in want of the means 
of subsistence because too much has been produced! 
The forces of production let loose, spurred by wild 
competition, are here fettered by the narrowness of 
the bourgeois property relations. " As a matter of 

° Communist Manifesto, p. 31. 



MARXIAN SOCIALISM IN OUTLINE 21 

fact," writes Engels, " since 1825, when the first gen- 
eral crisis broke out, the whole industrial and com- 
mercial world, production and exchange among all 
civilized peoples and their more or less barbaric 
hangers-on, are thrown out of joint about every ten 
years. Commerce is at a standstill, the markets are 
glutted, products accumulate, hard cash disappears, 
credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the 
workers are in want of the means of subsistence, be- 
cause they have produced too much of the means of 
subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, ex- 
ecution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for 
years; productive forces and products are wasted and 
destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of 
commodities finally filters off, more or less depreciated 
in value, until production and exchange gradually 
begin to move again. Little by little the pace quickens. 
It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a 
canter, the canter in turn grows into a headlong 
gallop, a perfect steeplechase of industry. And so 
over and over again. We have now, since the year 
1825, gone through this five times, and at the present 
moment (1877) we are going through it for a sixth 
time." ^ The conquest of new markets and the more 
thorough exploitation of the old ones but pave the 
way for more extensive, more destructive, more 
formidable crises. 

' Frederick Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, trans- 
lated by E. Aveling (New York, 1901), pp. 41, 42. 



22 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

In these crises the whole mechanism of capitalist 
production breaks down under the pressure of pro- 
ductive forces which the existing society can neither 
utilize nor harness. Thus capitalism stands convicted 
of incapacity further to direct these forces. The con- 
centration of industry and of wealth, the proletariza- 
tion of the masses, the deterioration of the proletariat, 
the increasing virulence of class struggles in politics 
and the increasing disastrousness of commercial crises 
— what do these developments indicate but the rapidly 
approaching cataclysm of the capitalistic mode of pro- 
duction? And what do they herald but the expro- 
priation of the means of production by society as a 
whole ? 

The concentration of industry is already socializing 
production. The old anarchic production is gradually 
disappearing. The producers on a large scale in a 
particular branch unite in trusts, determine the total 
production and regulate the price. " In these trusts, 
freedom of competition changes into its very opposite 
— into monopoly; and the production without any 
definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates to the 
production upon a definite plan of the invading so- 
cialistic society. Certainly this is so far still to the 
benefit and advantage of the capitalists. But in this 
case the exploitation is so palpable that it must break 
down. No nation will put up with production con- 
ducted by trusts, with so barefaced an exploitation of 



MARXIAN SOCIALISM IN OUTLINE 23 

the community by a small band of dividend- 
mongers." ^ 

While the concentration of industry goes on, the 
capitalist mode of production completes the trans- 
formation of the majority of the population into 
proletarians,^ who under the penalty of their own de- 
struction are bound to seize the political power and 
turn the socialized means of production into state 
property, thereby putting an end to their own misery, 
to the existence of a ruling class and to all class 
struggle. The final step will require a forcible over- 
throw of all existing social conditions. Then let the 
ruling class tremble before the coming of social revo- 
lution. The proletarians have a world to gain and 
nothing to lose but their chains. The proletarians do 
not indulge in Utopias. They are not concerning 
themselves with the details of the future socialist or- 
ganization of society; when the time comes, the very 
conditions of production will determine the mode of 
distribution. All that the proletarians are called upon 
to do is to take a conscious part in the inevitable class 
struggle. Their victory is foreordained.^ 



10 



* Engels, op. cit., New York ed., p. 44. 

' Ihid., p. 48. 

^^ '* The abandoning of private ownership of the means of pro- 
duction will become a necessity of nature through economic 
development The same economic development, however, will, 
with like necessity, bring about a method of production 
which must and will take the place of the existing one. Indeed, 
whoever has eyes to see can already discern not only the shoot, 



24 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

These are the fundamental conceptions of Marxian 
sociaHsm, of modern socialism, of so-called scientific 
socialism. This is the " common platform," to use 
the phrase of Engels, '' acknowledged by millions of 
workingmen from Siberia to California." Let us 
look into these doctrines. 

but also that it has grown fairly high." Karl Kautsky, 
Grundsdtze und Forderungen def Sozialdemokratie, Erldu- 
terungen zum Erfurter Programm (Berlin, 1892), p. 15. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF 
HISTORY 

Marxism, as we have seen, claims to have little 
interest in pious wishes. Its *' fundamental proposi- 
tion " is the economic interpretation of history.^ In 
the light of this theory it examines contemporary 
economic tendencies, commercial crises, concentration 
of production, proletarization of the masses, the class 
struggle, etc., and comes to the conclusion that social- 
ism, i.e., expropriation of the means of production 
by the working class in the interests of society as a 
whole, is inevitable and certain. It does not imagine 

^ Engels himself calls the economic interpretation of history 
the " fundamental proposition." That it is the fundamental 
proposition is of course evident from the whole system. Yet 
in Professor Le Rossignol's recent book on Orthodox Socialism 
we read: "And if it could by any possibility be shown that 
socialism, as a system of thought, is utterly untenable, the true 
socialist would retreat to his last stronghold, and say that social- 
ism, in the last analysis, is not a system of thought, but a 
process of social evolution, a law of the industrial world irre- 
sistibly moving on toward its final destiny" (p. 5). What this 
author means by Marx's " system of thought " is not made 
evident; but it is clear that he fails to see that the economic 
interpretation of history underlies the Marxian system. It is 
this interpretation of history that furnishes the Marxian socialist 
with the " process of social evolution," which is not his last, 
but his first and last stronghold. 

35 



26 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

that a new organization of society can be forcibly 
introduced before society is ready for it. Marx cate- 
gorically states that " no social order ever disappears 
before all the productive forces, for which there is_ 
room in it, have been developed; and new higher rela- 
tions of production never appear before the material 
conditions of their existence have matured in the womb 
of the old society." ^ 

How could Marx make such a statement, and yet 
believe in the imminent breakdown of capitalism, with 
socialism speeding on its trail? The answer is that 
the economic interpretation of history had for Marx 
and Engels in the middle of the last century quite 
a different meaning from that which even the most 
ardent and orthodox socialists can possibly give to it 
to-day. An incident narrated by Liebknecht in his 
reminiscences of Marx may serve as an illustration: 
" Marx, all flushed and excited, told me that during 
the last few days the model of an electric engine 
drawing a railroad train was on exhibition in Regent 
Street. Now the problem is solved — the consequences 
are indefinable. In the wake of the economic revolu- 
tion the political must necessarily follow, for the latter 
is only the expression of the former." ^ And poor 
Liebknecht could not sleep that night, for he saw the 
revolution coming. The model on Regent Street was 

^ Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Practical Economy, 
translated by N. I. Stone, p. 12. 

^ Liebknecht, Karl Marx, Biographical Memoirs (Chicago, 
1906), p. 57. 



HISTORY'S ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 27 

to him a Trojan horse, which the bourgeois society 
was leading in suicidal blindness into the citadel. Now 
the fate of capitalism was settled! That was in July, 
1850. J.LAnd to-day is 1896, the beginning of April," 
adds Liebknecht sadly. This incident gives an idea 
of the tempo in which Marx believed that social read- 
justments are bound to follow economic changes, the 
tempo in which all the " superstructures "of legal and 
political nature, all the " ideological " expressions of 
human consciousness, are dragged and driven by the 
material forces of production. In his belief the body 
of law that corresponds to a certain mode of produc- 
tion becomes not only antiquated but meaningless and 
invalid as soon as the mode of production changes. 
Marx did not express this merely as an academic prop- 
osition, he made it his defense when charged with agi- 
tating an armed rebellion. Before the court and jury 
of Cologne he pointed to the Code Napoleon and de- 
clared it to be no more binding than a stack of waste 
paper. It had lost for him its validity, because the 
economic conditions, to which it gave expression, had 
ceased to exist.* A social revolution was therefore 

* " Society, however, does not rest upon law. That is a legal 
fiction. Rather the law must rest on society. It must be 
the expression of the interests and needs of society which 
result from the social and invariably material method of 
production as against the arbitrariness of the individual. 
As for the Napoleonic Code, which I have in my hand, that has 
not engendered modern civil society. This society, which arose 
in the eighteenth century and developed in the nineteenth, finds 
in the Code only a legal expression. As soon as that no longer 



28 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

imminent. In the autumn of 1850, in the magazine 
Die neue Rheinische Zeitung, Marx states with assur- 
ance : '' A new revolution is possible only in conse- 
quence of a new crisis. The former, however, is as 
certain as the latter.'^ ^ The crisis came and the crisis 
went, but there was no sign of a revolution. This 
tends to show that no matter how great a discovery, 
how true a doctrine the economic interpretation of 
history may be, it is not an altogether safe instrument 
for social forecasts. In 1895, in his preface to 
Marx's Klassenkdmpfe in Frankreich, Engels ac- 
knowledged the fact that he and Marx had altogether 
underestimated the strength and vitality of capitalistic 
society, .,. " History has proven that we, and all that 
have thought similarly, were wrong. History has 
made it clear that the state of economic development 
on the continent was far from ripe for the abolition of 
the capitalistic mode of production." ^ 

For a prognosis of the future the economic inter- 
pretation of history is available only when the eco- 
nomic factor is the only one with which we have to 

corresponds to social conditions, it is merely so much waste paper 
. . . The laws necessarily changed with the changing condi- 
tions of life. The maintaining of the old laws against the new 
needs and demands of the social development is at bottom 
nothing but a hypocritical assertion (in accord with the spirit 
of the age) of special interests against the common interest." 
Karl Marx vor den K'olner Geschworenen (Berlin, 1895), p. 15. 

" Literarischer Nachlass von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, 
1841-1850, Bd. Ill (Stuttgart, 1902), p. 468. 

^ Karl Marx, Die Klassenkdmpfe in Frankreich, 1848- 1850, 
mit Einleitung von Friedrich Engels (Berlin, 1895), p. 8. 



HISTORY'S ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 29 

deal, when the other factors of social life are but 
feeble reflexes of the forces of production — naturae 
naturatae, to use Spinoza's expression — wholly incapa- 
ble of exerting any independent influence. Then in- 
deed the social organism is very simple, and social 
science can be reduced to a social mechanics. Did 
Marx actually carry his theory so far as this? As 
early as 1852, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis 
Bonaparte, he acknowledges the power of traditions : 
" Man makes his own history, but he does not make 
it out of whole cloth; he does not make it out of 
conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he 
finds close at hand. The traditions of all past genera- 
tions weigh like an Alp upon the brain of the living." '^ 
But while such concessions can be found in Marx's 
waitings, his interpretation of history was from the 
beginning rigidly and harshly economic. In later years 
Engels had to confess that he and Marx, were partly 
responsible for the fact that their followers sometimes 
laid more stress on the economic side than^it deserved.^ 

^ Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 
translated by Daniel De Leon (New York, 1898), p. 5. Of 
course the German word Alp should have been translated " night- 
mare." 

* " That at times more stress was laid by our followers uporK., 
the economic side than it deserved both Marx and I had in 
part to confess. We had to emphasize against our opponents 
this main tenet of ours which was denied, and there was not 
always time, place or opportunity to give the other principles 
their due. But when it came to the treatment of an historical 
proposition, there the situation was different and no error 
was possible. It is, however, only too frequently that men think 



o 



o MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 



He admits that all the so-called ideological super- 
structures exert an influence and are in constant inter- 
reaction. The economic cause is but their original 
and perhaps very remote source. But still the eco- 
nomic factor is the predominant one. Thus Engels 
wrote in 1894: " It is not that the economic situation 
is the cause, in the sense of being the only active agent, 
and that everything else is only a passive result. It 
is, on the contrary, a case of mutual action on the 
basis of the economic necessity, which in the last in- 
stance always works itself out." ^ 

In the same letter Engels still further widens and 
modifies the economic interpretation. The geograph- 
ical basis is included in economic relations, and " race 
is itself an economic factor." ^*^ Again we are told 
that all " the political, legal, philosophical, religious, 
literary and artistic developments rest upon the eco- 
nomic. But they all react upon one another and upon 

that they have completely understood a new theory and are 
competent to use it without more ado as soon as they have 
mastered its main points, and that not always correctly. I 
cannot spare some of the later followers of Marx this reproach, 
and now and then most curious stuff was produced by them." 
This letter is dated September, 1890, and was first published in 
Der sosialistische Akademiker, October, 1895. It is here quoted 
from Masaryk, Philosophische und soziologische Grundlagen des 
Marxismus (Wien, 1899), p. 104. 

" Letter in Der somalistische Akademiker, quoted in Woltman, 
Der historische Materialismus (1900), p. 249. A portion of the 
letter is also reprinted in Seligman, The Economic Interpreta- 
tion of History (New York, 1902), pp. 64, 65. 

''Ibid. 



HISTORY'S ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 31 

the economic basis." " This conception of history is 
very far from the original contention of Marx and 
Engels. It is doubtful whether this economic inter- 
pretation is methodology's last word, but it has stood 
its ground well. Scholarly criticism, like that of 
Stammler, Seligman and others, has considerably 
broadened and modified the theory but has not over- 
thrown it. 

The paramount importance of the economic factor 
in history has been practically conceded, but whether 
this new method will transform history into an exact 
science is exceedingly doubtful. One of the obstacles 
in the way of scientific history is the general desire 
of men for unscientific history. What social science 
can tell us with tolerable accuracy, viz., the broad, 
general changes in humanity's methods of work, in 
its conceptions and its institutions, does not satisfy us. 
It is life in terms of life that attracts us. We want 
books like The True PortraicHire of His Sacred 
Majesty King Charles I in His Solitudes and Suf- 
ferings; we want to hear all about the personal life 
and influence of every mistress of Louis XIV; we 
want all the actors and puppets of history depicted and 
analyzed. It is scientifically impossible, but the im- 
possible has to be done. Vox' popidi, vox Dei. Ac- 
cordingly, the historian revivifies dead heroes and tells 
us more about them than he could truthfully state 
about his next-door neighbor, often more than he 
*^ Ihid, The italics are mine. 



Z2 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

actually knows about himself. In doing so, however, 
he makes no freer use of his imagination than the 
theologian, the philosopher, the sociologist, or any 
talkative scientist in his particular branch of knowl- 
edge. Mephisto might have addressed them all : 

" Is it the -first time in your life you're driven 
To hear false witness in a case? 
Of God, the world, and all that in it has a place. 
Of man, and all that moves the being of his race. 
Have you not terms and definitions given 
With brazen forehead, daring breast f 
'And, if you'll probe the thing profoundly. 
Knew you so much — and you'll confess it roundly! — ■ 
As here of 'Schwerdtlein's death and place of rest? '* 

Quite so ! And yet among the traits that humanity 
cannot lose without losing its identity are the " brazen 
forehead and daring breast " — in other words, the 
aspiration to know, to understand, to comprehend. 
Our conceptions have varied, so has our knowledge, 
but never our desire. The effort of thought and im- 
agination to go beyond the limits of knowledge is 
only a part of our constant endeavor to overcome by 
intellect our physical disabilities. There are, in the 
history of such efforts, partial failures more inspiring 
than our most signal successes. A place of honor 
among such partial failures belongs to Marx's eco- 
nomic interpretation of history. It was an attempt 



HISTORY'S ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 33 

to make an exact science of our past, to solve the 
problems of the present and to disclose to us with 
scientific precision our future. We have seen that the 
method has already lost the extreme simplicity v^hich 
constituted its chief youthful charm. It is no longer 
simply economic; the independent power and influence 
of our traditions, our political and religious convic- 
tions and our various ideologies have been recognized ; 
and no method has been discovered to measure quanti- 
tatively the forces of these ideal powers, either abso- 
lutely or in relation to the basic economic factor. 
Under these circumstances and in view of the com- 
plexity of the forces that must be taken into account, 
no scientific prognosis of our future is possible. In 
a general way we can of course discuss the probable 
political or social consequences of our present eco- 
nomic tendencies. There is nothing to hinder proph- 
ecy, but there is also no guaranty of its fulfilment. 
It has already been pointed out that the economic 
interpretation of history is of great value in analyzing 
the underlying conditions of a given historic epoch. 
Engels's amendments to the original formulation of 
the economic interpretation are so broad that it has 
entirely lost its original character of a cook-book 
recipe for making history. Even its name may be 
a misnomer, since traditions weigh and ideals count, 
and both modify the economic basis. But at least this 
much of it remains — its demand for a strictly realistic, 
consistent, causally connected history. In dealing with 



34 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

a social movement, a political event or a type of cul- 
ture, the historian must causally explain its genesis. 
He cannot beg the question simply by appealing to 
some inborn traits and characteristics of the given 
decade or the given nation. These traits and char- 
acteristics must themselves be causally explained. But 
no explicit directions can be given for connecting a 
particular situation or event with particular precedent 
conditions or events. This is left to the judgment, 
discrimination and intuition of the historian. Of two 
historians, therefore, both adhering to the same 
method, one may prove himself an imbecile, the other 
a genius. The application of the method remains an 
art. 

This is well illustrated by some of the writings of 
Engels. Here for instance is his explanation of the 
Protestant Reformation : " The bourgeoisie, for the 
development of its industrial production, required a 
science which ascertained the physical properties of 
natural objects and the modes of action of the forces 
of nature. Now up to then science had but been the 
humble handmaid of the church, had not been allowed 
to overstep the limits set by faith, and for that reason 
had been no science at all. Science rebelled against 
the church; the bourgeoisie could not do without 
science, and, therefore, had to join the rebellion." ^^ 
So " bourgeoisie " and " science " are responsible for 

^^ Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (New York, 1901), 
p. xxii. The italics are mine. 



HISTORY'S ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 35 

the Protestant revolt. That is both new and startHng ! 
The exact date of the appearance of the " bourgeoisie " 
is nowhere definitely given by Marx or by Engels, but 
as to its approximate date they leave no doubt: In 
the Communist Manifesto we are told that the rule of 
the bourgeoisie has lasted *' scarce one hundred 
years," ^^ and that during the French Revolution the 
bourgeois epoch was still only " impending." ^* It 
therefore appears that the bourgeoisie was shaking 
Rome and remodeling religion some three hundred 
years before its epoch arrived. Still more remarkable 
is the activity attributed to science in the period of 
the Reformation. Science in the sense of Marx and 
of Engels did not then exist. Nor, in the pre- 
Reformation period, was there anything like the later 
conflict between science and religion. There is no 
case on record in which the Church of Rome, before 
the Reformation, seriously interfered with learning. 
It had none of the organs of suppression which it later 
developed in such abundance. There was no index 
expurgatorius, and before the fifth Later an Council 
there was no censorship of books. All new learning 
as a matter of fact was patronized by the worldly 
court of Rome. A certain amount of heresy was 
there considered a sign of good breeding. The air 
of Rome before the Reformation was certainly a great 
deal freer than that of Wittenberg and Geneva after 

*^ Communist Manifesto, Kerr ed., p. 20. 
'* Ihid., p. 59. 



36 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

the Reformation. The statement, therefore, that the 
Reformation was in its essence a rebelHon of science 
against the church is ludicrous. There are no facts 
to support it/^ 

Neither the bourgeoisie nor science had anything to 
do with the Reformation. Nor was it a religious 
issue at the outset, but, as Mr. Henry C. Lea has 
pointed out, an economic issue. In the famous in- 
dictment of the papacy by Ulrich Hutten, addressed 
to Leo X in 15 17, there is not a single word about 
faith or doctrine. His " whole gravamen,'' as Mr. 
Lea observes, " consists in the abuse of powers — the 
spoliations, the exactions, the oppression, the sale of 
dispensations and pardons, the fraudulent devices 

^° It is singular that Engels should not have perceived that 
the Protestant revolt was susceptible of a more direct and more 
plausible economic interpretation than that which he selected. 
Cf. Henry C. Lea, " The Eve of the Reformation," in The Cam- 
bridge Modern History, vol. i (New York, 1902), ch. xix, pp. 
653-692. As a matter of fact the first to give an economic inter- 
pretation of the revolt was Luther himself. One has only to 
read his address, An den Christlichen Adel Deutscher Nation 
von des Christlichen Standes Besserung, to see that the Reforma- 
tion was largely a protest against the fearful economic exploita- 
tion of Germany by the Church of Rome. Luther writes, for 
example: "How is it that we Germans are forced to suffer 
such theft and exploitation by the pope? ... I think that Ger- 
many gives much more now to Rome and the pope than it did 
in former days to the emperors. Yes, many of us think that 
every year over 300,000 gulden go from Germany to Rome, 
purely in vain, and in return we get but derision and abuse. And 
then we wonder that princes, nobles, cities and monasteries, land 
and people, grow poor! We ought rather to wonder that we 
still have something to eat. ... If we hang thieves by law. 



HISTORY'S ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION Z7 

whereby the wealth of Germany was cunningly 
transferred to Rome." ^^ 

One cannot read the contemporary documents with- 
out being aware of the fact that the Protestant Ref- 
ormation was a political revolution, chiefly incited by 
an economic grievance. It was a refusal of tribute 
to a foreign power. Mr. Lea shows that before the 
Reformation the most Catholic and orthodox states, 
like Spain and France and the Italian cities, were con- 
stantly on the verge of revolt against the papacy, and 
this on account of financial exactions, although there 
was also much complaint of interference in the admin- 
istration of justice. All these symptoms and warn- 
ings, however, had no effect on Rome. The Curia 
continued to act as if the Decalogue had been intended 
to serve as a source of revenue for Rome. Its venality 

and behead robbers, why should we allow this Roman miser, 
who is the greatest thief and robber that has ever appeared or 
ever will appear on earth, to go free? . . . There is in Rome 
a constant buying, selling, exchanging, bartering, intoxication, 
lying, deceiving, robbing, stealing, boasting, whoring and vil- 
lainy. . . . Venice, Antwerp and Cairo can in no way compete 
against this fair and traffic of Rome. ... At last the pope 
has erected an exchange especially for all these noble com- 
mercial transactions, the Datorius House at Rome. Thither 
must come all those who act in this way in order to obtain 
fiefs and livings. ... If you have money in this exchange, 
then you can get everything, and not only that, but here all 
sorts of usury are considered honest money, and stealing goods 
is vindicated. . . . Oh, what skinning and what exaction go 
on there; it is made known that all the laws of God are only 
made so that money can be amassed, money which must be had 
in order to be a Christian." 
^® Lea^ loc. cit., p. 667. 



38 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

became proverbial. Even ^neas Sylvius, before he 
became pope, had no scruple, as Mr. Lea informs us, 
in asserting that everything was for sale in Rome, and 
that nothing was to be had there without money. The 
most popular books of the time, like the Stultifera 
Narns of Brandt and the Schelmenzunft of Thomas 
Murner, were savage attacks on Rome. Murner is 
never tired of dwelling on the scandals and exactions 
of the clergy from high to low, from bishop to monk. 
When the lord, he tells us, has shorn the sheep, the 
priest comes and fairly disembowels it. The invention 
of printing aided greatly in making the opposition 
to Rome European, in fusing local grievances into 
a general discontent and hostility. When Luther hung 
up his theses on the church door of Wittenberg, they 
were read and known a month later in every school and 
convent of Europe. 

The Protestant revolt started in Germany because 
this country was politically weak and consequently 
the more exposed to Rome's rapacity. In France and 
Spain the kings were able to resist the demands of 
the Curia with some measure of success; in Germany 
the emperor had no corresponding power. " In 1521 
the papal nuncio Aleander writes that, five years be- 
fore, he had mentioned to Pope Leo his dread of a 
German uprising; he had heard from many Germans 
that they were only waiting for some fool to open his 
mouth against Rome 



'J 17 



^^ Lea, loc. cit., p. 690. 



HISTORY'S ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 39 

The financial exactions and venality of the Curia 
caused the Protestant revolt. That is Mr. Lea's ex- 
planation of the event. Here also we have an eco- 
nomic interpretation of history; but how different is 
the story from that told by Engels ! ^^ 

Marxian socialism calls itself *' scientific socialism " 
because of its economic interpretation of history. 
With the help of this method it claims to unveil to 
us the real story of the past; with the help of the 
same method it claims to reveal to us the future. Seri- 
ous as are the difficulties which an analysis of the past 

^^ Extraordinary is also Engels's economic interpretation of 
predestinarianism. Calvin's doctrine of predestination, Engels 
informs us, " was the religious expression of the fact that, in the 
commercial world of competition, success or failure does not 
depend upon a man's activity or cleverness, but upon circum- 
stances uncontrollable by him. It is not of him that willeth or 
of him that runneth, but of the mercy of unknown superior 
economic powers; and this was especially true at a period of 
economic revolution, when all old commercial routes and centers 
were replaced by new ones, when India and America were 
opened to the world, and when even the most sacred economic 
articles of faith — the value of gold and silver — began to totter 
and break down." Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, 
pp. xxiii, xxiv. As a matter of fact, however, the doctrine of 
predestination antedates considerably Calvin's writings and En- 
gels's commercial routes. Compare, for instance, Romans viii, 
30: "And whom he foreordained, them he also called: and 
whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, 
them he also glorified." Engels could find the whole doctrine 
of predestination in St. Augustine's De libero arbitrio, in the 
fourth century, or in Scotus Erigena's De predesfinatione, in the 
ninth century, or in St. Thomas's Summa theologica, in the thir- 
teenth century, to say nothing of the writings of earlier religious 
thinkers. In defense of Engels's statement it might be urged 



40 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

at times presents, its data are certainly more tangible 
than the events of the future. Engels's story of the 
Protestant Reformation shows that his method does 
not automatically produce a scientific history of our 
past. Is it then reasonable to suppose that the same 
method insures infallibility when the future is con- 
cerned ? 

There is no necessary connection between the eco- 
nomic interpretation of history and socialism. A man 
may interpret the past in terms of economic cause 
and effect and yet be given to no speculations about 

that the doctrine of predestination, however ancient its formula- 
tion, did not get its hold on the people before the commercial 
development of the sixteenth century, with its many bank- 
ruptcies, had prepared the popular mind for such a doctrine. 
It is true that predestinarianism did not become popular before 
the sixteenth century. But on the other hand it is not in com- 
mercial Venice and Genoa, but in countries very backward 
economically, that the doctrine first came into vogue, e.g., in 
Scotland and in New England. Here again Engels's interpreta- 
tion fails to interpret. The spread of predestinarianism in the 
wake of the Protestant revolt seems to me easily comprehensible 
without any such forced explanations. The writings of the early 
churchmen, as we have seen, are full of predestinarianism. The 
mediaeval Church, however, could not possibly make a basic doc- 
trine of it, for the simple reason that, if men and women were 
predestined to be saved or damned, then all the pardons and 
absolutions which the Church might sell were of very doubtful 
value. One of Germany's distinguished theologians, Johan 
Rucherath of Wesel, who was a predestinarian, drew precisely 
these conclusions. Such conclusions interfered with the business 
of the Church, and he was compelled to recant in 1479- The 
leaders of the Reformation, as we know, had a profound con- 
tempt for "works" as they saw them practised. It seemed 
unreasonable to Luther that salvation should depend upon the 



HISTORY'S ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 41 

the future, or he may be led to forecast an increasing 
individualism. It would obviously be inadmissible to 
call such an one a socialist. Until recently, neverthe- 
less, every writer who interpreted history economically 
was taken and declared to be an orthodox disciple of 
socialism. This was no chance error, but rather a 
well-defined type of a mode of classification in which 
the popular mind habitually indulges. The popular 
mind, it is well to remember, does not dwell with the 
philosophers in their " marble temple shining on a 
hill," but in the muddy world of concrete personal 
experiences.^^ Systems of philosophy, or scraps of 

" works " which he had such abundant opportunity to observe, 
and we see him turning to salvation by faith, Calvin, likewise 
detesting the " works " of the Romanists, took another road 
of opposition — predestinarianism. The doctrine of salvation by 
faith and the doctrine of election alike emphasized the opposition 
of the reformers to the purely technical character of the " works " 
required by Rome. Interesting are Dr. Bush's observations on 
the practical reasons which led two such contrasting centuries as 
that of Augustine and Calvin to determinism. " If a large part 
of the system of ideas known as Augustinian was invented in 
the fifth century to prove the necessity to man of the official 
ministrations of the Church, it was adapted in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries to prove the futility of those ministrations. 
How should the sacraments play any part in a man's salvation 
if this is a matter decided by the direct election of God? How 
should some words spoken by a priest control the action of 
grace? For precisely opposite reasons to those which influenced 
Augustine, the Augustinian determinism became a dogma of the 
Reformation ; in the one case determinism to prove the necessity 
of sacraments, in the other to prove the futility of sacraments." 
Wendell T. Bush, " Sub specie aeternitatis," in The Journal of 
Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. iv (1907), 
p. 660. " William James, Pragmatism (1907), pp. 21, 22. 



42 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

them, act upon the mind of the public only after they 
have become part and parcel of that tangle of experi- 
ences through which it has to find its way. In assort- 
ing and classifying theories the popular mind is guided 
not by logic but by experience. It perceives that cer- 
tain theories, philosophical and literary, are set forth 
and defended by persons who hold certain social or 
political views; and by a process which may be de- 
scribed as " substitutional " it identifies the theories 
with the tendencies which they foster and subserve. 
Thus in Russia, for decades, the writers who defended 
*' art for art's sake " were immediately recognized as 
political reactionaries, while every " realist " was as- 
sumed to be a liberal or a radical. Similarly in Ger- 
many, during the first half of the nineteenth century, 
" romanticism " stood for political conservatism, if not 
for reaction, while in Feuerbach's decade *' natural- 
ism " stood for political revolution and a humani- 
tarian socialism. Similarly Marx's economic inter- 
pretation of history has come to stand for militant 
socialism. 

Logically, such substitutions were and are inde- 
fensible. The connection between these theories and 
the practical ends which they were used to subserve 
was local or temporary. In England, for example, 
William Blake, who was certainly neither realistic nor 
naturalistic, who shared with German romanticists and 
Russian devotees of art for art's sake the love of the 
symbolic and mystic, inclined in his political theories 



HISTORY'S ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 43 

to revolutionary socialism.^^ In England, " art for 
art's sake " was preached by William Morris, a so- 
cialist, and by Oscar Wilde, who saw in man's first 
disobedience man's original virtue, advocated the aboli- 
tion of property, urged taking rather than begging, 
marked down all our values and considered our society 
to be bankrupt. Similarly, the economic interpreta- 
tion of history has been divorced from socialism. To- 
day, as Professor Seligman points out, " the writers 
who are . . . making the most successful applica- 
tion of the economic interpretation are not socialists at 
all." '^ 

In their place and time, however, these popular clas- 
sifications were accurate. The Russian literary men 
of the sixties who advocated art for art's sake repre- 
sented a religious and political authoritarianism. On 
the other hand, the faithful description of the actual 
conditions of existence in Russia which the realists 
called for and supplied meant propaganda, primarily 
of discontent, ultimately of revolution. The German 
romanticists were conservatives or reactionaries; and 
Feuerbachian naturalism, according to Feuerbach him- 
self, was intended to prepare the way for the recon- 

'" C/. William Blake, Poetical Works (Rossetti's ed., 1890), 
p. 142. Regarding Blake as a " Liberty boy " and his attitude 
towards the Revolution, cf. Edwin J. Ellis, The Real Blake 
(London, 1907), pp. 162 et seq. 

"Seligman, The Economic Interpretation of History (1902), 
p. 109, 



44 MARXISM VERS'US SOCIALISM 

struction of the political and social order.^^ Similarly, 
the popular identification of the economic interpreta- 
tion of history with socialism represented a correct 
appreciation of Marx's motives and of the practical 
bearing of the method as employed by him and his 
disciples. 

It was for political reasons that Marx emigrated 
to France; it was for similar reasons that he was 
exiled from France; in Brussels he lived under the 
constant and suspicious supervision of the Belgian 
" administration of public safety." Is it to be assumed 
that he gave so much concern to the several govern- 
ments because he was busily engaged in elaborating 
a scholarly method for historical research? Or is it 
to be assumed that a year after the hunger riots of 
the Silesian weavers, a year or two before the revolu- 
tion of '48, he was taking a rest from all political 
activity, escaping the turmoil by giving himself up to 
the joys of pure theory? 

Far from it. We see Marx and Engels speculating ; 
but the axes upon which their speculations revolve are 
the social movement and the political revolution. 
Their literary activity is their political activity.^^ The 
economic interpretation was not the offspring of dis- 

"LuDWiG Feuerbach, Werke (Leipzig, 1846), I, pp. xiv, xv. 

" ". . . It is hence quite evident how important a place the 
desire to do practical work above all else held in this literary 
plan on which Marx and Engels had for a long time been intent." 
Aus dem literarischen Nachlass von Marx, Engels, etc. (Stutt- 
gart, 1902), II, p. 332. 



HISTORY'S ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 45 

passionate research; it was conceived in minds sat- 
urated with ideas of social revolution. As early as 
1845, ^t the Elberfeld gathering of communists, En- 
gels, still a half-Utopian so far as the future organiza- 
tion of society was concerned, argued for communism 
as an economic necessity and pictured the social revo- 
lution as economically unavoidable. " With the same 
certainty," Engels tells us, " with which from a given 
mathematical proposition a new one is deduced, with 
the same certainty we can deduce the social revolution 
from the existing social conditions and the principles 
of political economy." ^* Two years later Marx and 
Engels were writing the Communist Manifesto, the 
*' fundamental proposition " of which is the economic 
interpretation of history. 

The propaganda of the economic interpretation of 
history, of the " critical insight into the conditions, 
progress and general results of the actual social move- 
ment," ^^ was Marx's chief activity during the years 
1846-1848, and this activity was political. He was 
not conducting a historical seminar in Brussels; he 
was supplying the revolutionary army with a new 
revelation and was instilling into it a spirit of absolute 
confidence in the triumph of its cause. It was the 
future that concerned him ; the past was a piece justi- 
ficative. An interpretation of history he called it, be- 

^* Rheinische Jahrhucher zur gesellschaftlichen Reform, heraus- 
gegeben von Hermann Piitmann, vol. i (Darmstadt, 1845), pp. 
78, 79- 

^° Marx, Herr Vogt (London, i860), p. 35. 



46 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

cause to him, born as he was in the HegeHan school, 
past, present and future were one historical process. 

It was Marx's economic interpretation of history, 
and not that of any other man, which attracted public 
attention; and in classifying the economic interpreters 
of history as socialists, the popular mind exhibited, 
as in other similar cases, a perfectly sound apprecia- 
tion of both the psychological motive and the practical 
aim of the theory. But this classification also has 
proved to be temporary. To-day, such is the irony 
of fate, the economic interpretation of history, while 
of great value to the historical student, is an unyield- 
ing and merciless steel trap in which so-called scientific 
socialism is caught and held. 



CHAPTER IV 

CONCERNING CONCENTRATION OF PRO- 
DUCTION IN INDUSTRY AND AGRICUL- 
TURE 

The socialistic state of Marx was not to be manu- 
factured by any world-reformer. Socialism was to 
be a pro4uct of economic tendencies, and of these the 
most important was the concentration of production. 

Any one who is acquainted with the thought of the 
nineteenth century knows that the industrial changes 
that were in progress were very generally viewed with 
misgivings if not with apprehension. In the first half 
of the century, i.e., at the time when the doctrines of 
scientific socialism were formulated, the tall chimney, 
to use Schultze-Gaevernitz's expression/ was generally 
regarded as a warning finger — a mene tekel of im- 
pending revolution. The social effects of the intro- 
duction of machinery were too serious to be over- 
looked. The tendency towards industrial centraliza- 
tion and the social, economic and political aspects of 
this tendency were attracting the attention of many 

^ Schultze-Gaevernitz, The Cotton Trade in England and on 
the Continent (London, 1895), p. 164. 

47 



48 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

thoughtful men before Marx began to speak or write. 
What was drastically formulated by Marx as an un- 
avoidable necessity had been previously suggested and 
discussed as a possibility. Constantin Pecqueur,^ for 
example, had pointed out with remarkable clearness 
that the older methods of production could not com- 
pete with the modern factory, and that production on 
a large scale was so much cheaper that the centraliza- 
tion of industry was a matter of economic necessity.^ 
Pecqueur had also raised the question : If production on 
a large scale has undoubted advantages, what is likely to 
happen to the small establishments ? and had answered 
that they would be wiped out by cruel competition, and 
that the small producers would possibly themselves 
become proletarians. Socially and politically such a 
situation would reduce itself to a new industrial feudal- 
ism. The sole alternative which he saw was a central- 

^ C. Pecqueur, Economie sociale: Des interets du commerce, 
de I'industrie et de ['agriculture, et de la civilisation en general, 
sous I'influence des applications de la vapeur (2d ed., Paris, 
1839). This work of Pecqueur was widely read and was 
crowned by the French Institute. 

' " Every one knows that, in reality, in using steam to reduce 
the cost of products and realize great advantages, it is necessary 
to operate on a large scale, to use large amounts of capital and 
a large number of workmen; in a word, to produce on a large 
scale. . . . Otherwise there is no economy. The expense of the 
initial establishment and maintenance of two steam-engines of 
unequal power is not proportional to their degree of inequality. 
Thus an engine twice as powerful as another does not cost twice 
as much ; it does not require two stokers instead of one, twice as 
much room, twice as much fuel, nor twice as much time to 
operate." C. Pecqueur, op. cit., I, pp. 56, 57. 



CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION 49 

iztd industry on democratic lines, based on copartner- 
ship and cooperation.* 

Whether Pecqueur influenced Marx is immaterial. 
The ideas expressed by the French economist were 
at the time more or less common property. Only the 
way in which Marx formulated them is important. 
For him it was not a question of a choice between 
industrial feudalism or industrial democracy. The 
present had but one road to travel; upon the future 
was the stamp of the inevitable. From his point of 
view there was no need to invent socialistic industrial 
schemes. Industry and agriculture would necessarily 
become thoroughly centralized and socialized. There 
would be no need to force the artisan, the small trader, 
the farmer into a socialistic scheme. " The small 
tradespeople, shopkeepers and retired tradesmen gen- 
erally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these 

* ** One may readily infer that joint stock companies or very 
rich individual capitalists and manufacturers will swallow up the 
work of the small producers, killing them off by competition 
which is immeasurably unequal and cruelly pitiless ; it may happen 
that all who are neither capitalists nor landowners will, little 
by little, join the ranks of the proletarians. ..." Ibid., I, pp. 
396, 397- 

" Either on the disappearance of small-scale production the 
small producers will be co-partners of the large concerns, aiding 
in production and participating in the profits, in accordance with 
their capacity, their capital and their work; or they will degen- 
erate into paid workmen, into a herd of serfs working from day 
to day in factories ; into proletarians, always poor, always without 
a future; and all the large industries will be exclusively monop- 
olized by an industrial feudalism." Ibid., II, p. loi. 



50 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

sink gradually into the proletariat," ^ and the central- 
ization of industry goes on. Nor is that to be the 
fate of the lower middle class only. *' Entire sections 
of the ruling classes are by the advance of industry 
precipitated into the proletariat."^ To the question: 
Will socialism expropriate and abolish the hard-won 
private property of the small farmer? he responds: 
" There is no need to abolish that ; the development 
of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, 
and is still destroying it daily." "^ 

Marxian socialism had profound contempt for 
Utopias. Why should amateur schemes of an eco- 
nomic and social organization be elaborated, when 
capitalism's own mission was to organize and central- 
ize the production oJ^ the commonwealth? No preach- 
ing of eternal justice can assemble scattered produc- 
tion, and there is no possibility of socialism without 
such economic centralization. 

Sixty years have passed since Marx's Manifesto was 
published; it is therefore fair to inquire whether the 
economic changes that have occurred have justified his 
theories and expectations. 

That a centralization of industry has taken place 
is an undeniable fact. Moreover, this centralization 
has gone further in this country than anywhere else 
in the world. Professor Seligman writes : " Accord- 

^ Communist Manifesto (Kerr ed.), p. 21, 
' Ihid., p. 26. 
' Ihid., p. 34. 



CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION 51 

ing to the census of 1900 there were 185 combinations, 
representing 2,040 plants and turning out products to 
the value of $1,667,350,000, a little over 14 per cent 
of the total industrial output of the United States. 
But since 1900 the movement has progressed rapidly. 
In 1900 there were 16 combinations, each with a 
capital of over $50,000,000 and with an aggregate 
capital of $1,231,000,000. In 1907 . . . not only 
were there o.'j such combinations with an aggregate 
capital three times as great ($3,785,000,000), but a 
single combination now had a larger capital than the 
16 combinations and about one-half as large as all the 
185 combinations in 1900." ^ The combination to 
which Professor Seligman refers is the United States 
Steel Corporation, an industrial consolidation which 
controls not less than 785 industrial plants. While the 
United States is generally regarded as the land of 
trusts par excellence, the growth of large industrial 
consolidations and combinations is very much in evi- 
dence both in England and on the continent of Eu-- 
rope. 

But the centralization of industry in recent years 
is by no means primarily due to purely technical 
conditions — to the development of the tool into the 
machine. Steam and machinery have certainly fa- 
vored large-scale production, but there has been no 
such far-reaching centralization as the Marxian vision 
of future economic development presaged. The cotton 

® Seligman, Principles of Economics (3d ed., 1907), p. 342. 



52 



MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 



industry of Great Britain, the history of which fur- 
nished so much material to the author of Capital, ex- 
hibited, as Bernstein has pointed out, only a very 
moderate concentration in the twenty-odd years fol- 
lowing the publication of Marx's work. Here is a 
comparison of the data for 1868 as given by Marx 
with the data for 1890: 



Cotton Industry 



Factories 

Power-looms 

Spindles 

Persons employed 

Average number per factory 



1868 



2,549 

379,329 

32,000,014 

401,064 

156 



1890 



2,538 

615,714 
44,504,819 

528,795 
208 



Percentage 

OF 



decrease 0.43 

increase 62.00 

" 39-00 

*' 32.00 

" 33-00 



The other branches of the textile industry show, ac- 
cording to Bernstein, even less concentration.^ In at 
least one branch of the textile industry, in weaving, 
the number of factories steadily increased: in 1870 
they numbered 1,658; in 1874, 1,703; in 1878, 1,765; 
in 1885, 1,915; in 1890, 2,015. I" the textile industry 
as a whole, the number of establishments fluctuated 
as follows: in 1870 there were 6,807; in 1874, 
7,394; in 1878, 7,105; in 1885, 7,465; in 1890, 
7,190.'' 



^ Bernstein, Die Voraussetzungen des Socialismus und die 
Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie (Stuttgart, 1899), p. 56. 

^^ These data are taken from the Statistical Abstract for the 
United Kingdom (London, 1897), pp. 202, 203. 



CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION 53 

The development of the trust, therefore, can 
scarcely be regarded as the inevitable result of indus- 
trial technique. It is rather to be viewed as a counter- 
revolution against free competition. Free competition 
led persistently towards lower prices, overproduction 
and lower profits; the desire to check the ruinous re- 
sults of free competition has led to trade agreements, 
pools, syndicates, combinations — to one form or an- 
other of what we call the trust. '' After all," writes 
Macrosty, '^ men are in business not to exhibit the 
' natural ' laws of economics but to make an income, 
and it is a poor consolation to a bankrupt to know 
that he has been overwhelmed by a stream of tend- 
ency." ^^ 

Experience has further shown that trusts do not 
necessarily wipe out smaller concerns. In our every- 
day language we class as trusts not only giant 
mergers and rigid industrial consolidations, but all 
sorts of industrial trade agreements, ^ federations, 
pools, syndicates and associations formed for the pur- 
pose of maintaining prices. The looser federations 
are especially characteristic of Europe's industrial de- 
velopment. So Macrosty sums up the tendency in 
the English iron industry by expecting " in no very 
remote future to see the iron industry governed by 
loose federations of great powers, each large firm 

*^ Macrosty, Trusts and the State (1901), p. 152. 



54 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

belonging to a number of associations according to 
the variety of its products." ^^ 

As a matter of fact, pools and trade associations often 
help to maintain smaller industrial organizations. E.J . 
Smith, the promoter of the *' Birmingham Alliances," 
has laid special stress on the protecting of the smaller 
concerns, saying : '' The great advantage which a large 
capital gives must be retained as legitimate interest 
on capital only, instead of being given away for the 
purpose of flooding the markets with productions at 
selling-prices which cannot be charged by less fortu- 
nate firms without loss. Materials used in the process 
of manufacture have their fair average market values, 
which most makers have to pay. The purchasing of 
large quantities of material at one time, and to be 
paid for promptly, will no doubt make the buying- 
prices lower to the lucky capitalist, but whatever ad- 
vantage is gained in this way should be regarded as 
interest on capital and retained." ^^ 

The more one studies the trusts, the less one is 
inclined to make sweeping generalizations. The types 
of combinations are so numerous and the policies of 
the individual combinations are so varied that only 
one general statement can be made with confidence, 
namely, that all trusts tend to organize to a greater or 

** Macrosty, The Trust Movement in British Industry (1907), 
P- 330. 

^^ E. J. Smith, The New Trade Combination Movement (1899), 
p. 27. 



CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION 55 

less degree their respective industries and to maintain 
steadier prices. 

The social democrats of both continents, however, 
see in the American trust movement proof positive 
of the inerrancy of the Marxian forecast of economic 
development. Certain European socialist pamphlets 
convey the impression that the American manufactur- 
ing industry is thoroughly concentrated and organized, 
that the sm.aller producer is practically eliminated, 
and that the trusts are tending toward a trust of 
trusts. America therefore, at least technically and 
economically, is far ahead of all other countries on 
its way towards organized, centralized, socialized pro- 
duction. 

In studying the report on " Manufactures " of the 
Twelfth Census, one is impressed by the number of 
small and middle-size industrial establishments of 
which the report takes cognizance. Here are the 
figures for 512,254 industrial establishments 



14 



No employees, 110,510 51 to 100 employees, 11,663 

Under 5 " 232,726 loi to 250 " 8,494 

5 to 20 " 112,138 251 to 500 " 2,809 

21 to 50 " 32,408 501 to 1,000 " 1,063 

Over 1,000 employees, 443 

The Special census report of 1905 on " Manufactures " 
gives us a comparative table which shows, on the 
whole, a gradual tendency towards concentration, with 
the small producer in many industries holding his own. 

^* Twelfth United States Census (1900), "Manufactures," 
part i, p. Ixxiii. 



56 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

Indeed, the number of industrial establishments in- 
creased from 1890 to 1900 more rapidly than the num- 
ber of wage-earners/^ 





1890 


1900 


INCREASE 
(PERCENTAGE) 


Number of establishments, 


355415 


512,254 


44.1 


Number of wage-earners, 


4,251,613 


5,308,406 


24.9 



Of course it is a fact that certain industries are cen- 
tralized and organized on a national scale and are 
practically monopolies. Such facts present serious 
problems. But we are more likely to find an advan- 
tageous solution of such problems by dealing with the 
facts as they are than by dealing with unverifiable 
'' future " facts. 

The industry of Europe is much more scattered and 
decentralized than that of the United States. Ac- 
cording to the last German census, 4,770,669 out of 
about ten million wage-earners were employed in 
petty commercial and industrial establishments with 
one to five employees each.^^ In that country the inde- 
pendent artisans are far from being eliminated by the 
industrial process. In Prussia, in 1861, there were 
534,556 masters and 558,321 apprentices; in 1900- 
1902 the independent masters numbered 679,323, with 
559,738 journeymen (Geseilen) and 253,055 appren- 



" Special Census Report, " Manufactures," 1905, part i, p. 
xxxvi. 

^^ SoMBART, Sosialismus und sosiale Bewegung (6te Auflage, 
Jena, 1908), p. 84. 



CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION 57 

tices {Lehrlinge)}'' In commerce the small establish- 
ment is still more persistent than in industry. The 
German Empire counted : ^^ 



Commercial Establishments 


1882 


1895 


Without employees 


429,825 

246,413 

26,531 

463 


454,540 


With 1-5 " 


450,013 


" 6-50 " 


49,271 


" over 50 " 


960 







Such is the state of concentration in German in- 
dustry and commerce. Let us now consider the Marx- 
ian doctrine and the facts regarding concentration in 
agriculture. 

The attitude of Marx and of Engels towards the 
agricultural population was consistently unfriendly. In 
their first great work the fathers of scientific socialism 
praise capitalism for rescuing " a considerable part of 
the population from the idiocy of rural life." ^^ In 
the second part of the third volume of Capital Engels 
expresses the hope that the virgin soil of the Russian 
steppes and American prairies may still ruin Europe's 
landlords and peasantry.^^ The reason for this atti- 
tude is obvious. On the one hand socialist production 
is technically impossible unless scattered agriculture 

^^J. Wernicke, Kapitalismus und Mittelstandspolitik (Jena, 
1907), p. 134. '' Ibid., p. 240. 

^® Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, p. 19. 

""^ " Fortunately by no means all prairie land is as yet under 
cultivation; there still remains enough on hand to ruin all the 
great European landlords, and the small ones in addition." 
Marx, Das Kapital (Hamburg, 1894), vol. iii, part ii, p. 260. 



58 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

is concentrated; on the other hand the socialistic 
propaganda encounters in the peasant proprietor its 
most conservative and most obstinate foe, against 
whose will no social reconstruction of society is con- 
ceivable. In a discussion of the situation in France, 
Engels admits that no social revolution is possible 
without the backing of the peasants. ^^ 

The Marxian theory of course declares that small 
farming, like every petty industry, is doomed. This 
we learn from the Communist Manifesto; and the 
same information is given in the later writings of 
Marx and Engels and in those of their official com- 
mentators. Thus we read in Capital: " In the sphere 
of agriculture, modern industry has a more revolu- 
tionary effect than elsewhere, for this reason, that it 
annihilates the peasant, that bulwark of the old society, 
and replaces him by the wage laborer. Thus the de- 
sire for social changes and the class antagonisms are 
brought to the same level in the country as in the 
towns." ^" In Der Vorhote, the party organ of the 
International, Marx's ardent follower, Johann Philipp 
Becker, declared, in large print, soon after the appear- 
ance of Capital, that the omnipotence of capital, the 
influence of science, the tendencies of the times and 
the interest of society as a whole had irrevocably and 

^^ " In one respect our French associates are absolutely cor- 
rect ; in France no lasting revolution against the small farmers is 
possible." Fr. Engels, " Die Bauernfrage in Frankreich und 
Deutschland," Die neue Zeit, 1895, I, p. 301. 

^* Marx, Capital (fourth English ed., London, 1891), I, p. 513. 



CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION 59 

mercilessly condemned small-scale agriculture to slow 
but inevitable death. "^ This attitude was characteristic 
of the whole Marxian wing of the International. It 
was entirely in keeping with the Marxian doctrine, 
which may be summed up in the equation : small farm- 
ing stands in the same relation to centralized agricul- 
ture as the hand-loom to the power-loom in industry.^* 
The attitude of Marxism towards the land question 
did not change with the passing of the International. 
We find the same doctrine, and even the same wording 
of the doctrine, in Liebknecht's Grund- and Boden- 
frage, which for years served as a catechism for so- 
cialist agitation among the German peasantry. The 
central assertion of this booklet is that the small agri- 
culturist is doomed.^^ The doctrine is set forth to-day 

^' Der Vorhote, December, 1869, p. 181. 

** J. Georg Eccarius, Eines Arbeiters Widerlegung der na- 
Honokonomischen Lehren John Stuart Mills (Hottingen-Zurich, 
1888), p. 52. This booklet of Eccarius was revised by Marx 
and is consequently an authorized expression of his views. On 
page 57 of the same pamphlet one reads : " Farming on a small 
scale is politically, socially and economically doomed. It has 
nowhere fulfilled expectations and will nowhere keep pace with 
modern industry and social progress. It is the fifth wheel on 
the wagon, impeding political and social progress, the leaden 
weight which has paralyzed labor agitation in France and else- 
where on the Continent." 

^^ W. LiEBKNECHT, Die Grund- und Bodenfrage (Leipzig, 
Verlag der Genossenschaftsbuchdruckerei, 1874). The pamphlet 
ends (p. 128) with the words : " In short the steam plow will 
revolutionize agriculture in the same way as the steam loom 
and the spinning jenny have already revolutionized industry, — 
by destroying production on a small scale." The important 
fact is not that the booklet was in great vogue but that its posi- 



6o MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

in every Marxian social-democratic program. The 
program of the German Social Democratic party be- 
gins with the well-known sentence : " The economic 
development of bourgeois society leads by natural 
necessity to the downfall of the small industry, whose 
foundation is formed by the worker's private owner- 
ship of his means of production. It separates the 
worker from his means of production and converts 
him into a propertyless proletarian, while the means 
of production become the monopoly of a relatively 

tion was strictly Marxian. The critic of Marx may truly observe 
that here is a doctrine which had no basis of fact whatsoever 
and no shadow of justification. But the greater was the faith 
with which this theory was received. The experiences of 1848 
were fresh in men's memories, and the alternative suggested by 
the outcome of the French disturbances was that either the 
social revolution or the peasant was doomed. The socialists 
chose the latter interpretation. Liebknecht frankly explains : 
" We need the peasant and the small farmer if our struggle is not 
to be a hopeless one. The fatal opposition between city and 
country which has so far hindered and frustrated every move- 
ment in the direction of freedom must cease. The warning 
example of France is not lost upon us. On the 24th of February, 
1848, Paris, the city, overthrew the throne of the corrupt citizen 
king, and nine weeks later the country sent to Paris a reactionary 
National Assembly which undermined the newly founded re- 
public, and organized the insurrection of June, which was to 
overthrow the social-democratic, industrial proletariat. Five and 
a half months after the battle of June the country, by an over- 
whelming majority, chose Louis Bonaparte as president of the 
republic, and thereby prepared the way for the coup d'etat which 
three years later put an end to the republic, and delivered 
France over to the systematic plundering of the Bonapartist 
robbers. The country is what the peasants make it. The 
French peasantry created an empire through their blind fear 
of proletarian socialism." Ibid., p. 103. 



CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION 6i 

small number of capitalists and large landowners." 
The capitalist and the large landowner are thus put 
into one class, and small industry, whether industrial 
or agricultural, into another class, predestined to be 
destroyed. 

Let us turn now to the leading contemporary ex- 
ponent of orthodox Marxism, the official interpreter 
of the German party program, Karl Kautsky. He 
also admits that it is useless to try to make socialists 
out of real peasants. " Peasants who feel that they 
are not proletarians but true peasants, are not only 
not to be won over to our cause but belong to our 
most dangerous adversaries." ^^ Economic tendencies, 
however, are wiping them out of existence. To prom- 
ise any succor to the small-scale producer in industry 
or in agriculture is to feed him on illusions. Efforts 
to arrest the inevitable economic development will be 
fruitless; if they produce any results at all, these re- 
sults will be injurious to the classes in whose behalf 
the efforts are made. Painful as the process may be, 
the peasant is bound to sink into the proletariat.^^ 

Naturally enough this theory has aroused little en- 

^° Karl Kautsky, " Das Erfurter Programm und die Landagi- 
tation," Die neue Zeit, 1895, I, p. 280. 

" " It is not social democracy that is responsible for the 
economic development. Without its assistance the capitalist class 
sees to it that business on a small scale shall give v/ay to 
business on a large scale, nor has social democracy any reason 
to oppose such a development. One who opposes the economic 
development is not by any means a true representative of the 
real interest of the small farmer and small producer of the city, 



62 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

thusiasm in the agricultural districts; and neither in 
France nor in Germany have the socialists made any 
headway among the peasants. Realization of this fact 
has caused attempts to be made, both in France and in 
Germany, to make the socialist program more at- 
tractive to this class. The French Socialist Congress 
which met at Nantes, in September, 1894, and the 
German Social Democratic Convention (Parteitag) 
held at Frankfort, in October of the same year, adopted 
resolutions favoring protection of peasant interests. 
At the Frankfort Convention Dr. Schonlank suggested 
that a different '' lingo " be used in talking to the 
peasant. Socialistic doctrine should be administered to 
him in homeopathic doses, — otherwise, this speaker 
feared, the medicine might kill the patient. ^^ 

Such proposals and efforts are easily explicable 

for all attempts in that direction will inevitably prove futile, and 
in so far as they have any effect, will be injurious rather than 
beneficial. To hold out to the artisans and peasants a mode 
of action by which their small business can be made profitable 
is in no way to intercede for their interests ; it is rather awaken- 
ing in them illusions which can never be realized and which 
divert them from the right way of best protecting their interests." 
Karl Kautsky, Das Erfurter Programm in seinem grunds'dtz- 
lichen Theil erldutert (2d ed., Stuttgart, 1892), p. 254. 

^^" Though in this way we succeed in doing nothing more 
than neutralizing the effects of this peasantry, we have done 
enough. . . . 1848 must not repeat itself. When absolutism 
had reached its fruition the reaction promptly made concessions 
to the peasants and so won them over. We must be on our 
guard lest the hobnailed shoes of the peasants' sons he raised 
against us; we must neutralise and pacify them. (Applause.) With 
the country people we must talk plainly in their own jargon. 
We must at last urge a practical agitation, not merely a gray 



CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION 63 

from the opportunist point of view of the popular agi- 
tator, but they are not in harmony with the Marxian 
doctrine. The contradii 'on between that doctrine and 
the peasant program of the. Frankfort and Nantes 
Conventions was so glaring, that Kautsky expressed 
the situation quite accurately by saying that, while the 
socialists were still very far from capturing the peas- 
ants, the peasants had captured the socialists.^® No 
less distinct was Engels's protest. To a French so- 
cialist, who was seeking his instruction and advice, he 
explained that the progress of capitalism was destroy- 
ing peasant property absolutely; that there was no 
reason why the party should not endeavor to make 
the proletarization of the peasantry less painful; but 
that to go further and to try to save the peasantry 
was to attempt the economically impossible, to sacrifice 
the principle, to become reactionary.^^ Of the same 
tenor was the last article of Engels in the Neue Zeit, 
already quoted. Large-scale production, he said, 
would run down the peasantry with their small farms 

theory. . . . Our revolutionary politics cannot consist of high- 
sounding phrases. . . . The socialistic medicine must be admin- 
istered to the country people in homeopathic doses, otherwise it 
will kill the peasants." Protokoll uber die Verhandhmgen des 
Parteitages der sosialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands, abge- 
halten zu Frankfurt am Main, 1894, p. 141. 

^® " There is only one clear cause for this severe political 
relapse, and that is regard for the peasants. We have not as 
yet captured them, but they have already captured us." Die 
neue Zeit, 1895, I, p. 281. 

'** This letter is reprinted from the Vorwdrts in the proceed- 
ings of the Frankfort Convention, p. 151. 



64 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

just as a railroad train would run down a wheel- 
barrow.^^ How strongly Engels felt on the subject 
is further shown by some of his recently published 
letters to the American socialist, Sorge. In one of 
these he characterizes the effort to win the peasants 
as a "confidence game" (Bauernfdngerei), and de- 
clares that any attempt to protect them against taxes, 
usury and the great landholding interests is in the 
first place imbecile and secondly impossible.^ ^ His 
feelings were bound to be shared by every one who 
understood the Marxian doctrine and was a " scien- 
tific " socialist. Some of the leading German social- 
ists, like Schippel, did not hesitate to designate the 
socialist agrarian program as a bit of political charla- 
tanism.^^ And the Frankfort Convention of 1895 dis- 

'^ Engels, " Die Bauernfrage in Frankreich und Deutschland," 
Die neue Zeit, 1895, I, p. 303. 

^^ " On the continent the desire for further success grows with 
success, and the ensnaring of the peasantry in the literal sense 
is becoming the fashion. First the French in Nantes announce 
through Laf argue not only (as I have written you) that we are 
not called upon by our own direct interference to hasten the 
ruin of the small peasantry to which capitalism is committed, 
but, secondly, that we ought directly to protect the peasant 
against the taxes, usury, and the large landholding interests. 
That, however, we cannot undertake, for in the first place it is 
stupid and in the second place it is impossible." Briefe und 
Aussilge aus Brief en von Johann Philipp Becker, Josef Dietsgen, 
Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere 
(Stuttgart, 1906), p. 415. 

^""The agrarian program which suddenly endeavors to meet 
the peasant movement is a piece of this political charlatanism." 
Protokoll ilher die Verhandlungen des Parteitages 2u Breslau, 
1895, p. no. 



CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION 65 

avowed most emphatically the agrarian program, be- 
cause it promised to the peasantry the improvement of 
their conditions, which meant the strengthening of 
their property rights.^* 

The Convention of Frankfort adjourned; the Ger- 
man Social Democracy rested upon its reaffirmation 
of the Marxian doctrines, including the inevitable 
doom of the peasantry; but, by one of fate's little 
ironies, a census (the first since 1882) had been taken 
at the beginning of that very year, and while the dis- 
cussions in Frankfort were in progress the statistical 
results of this census were being computed. To the 
Marxian theorists the results were staggering. The 
small agricultural landholder was gaining ground. 
The doctrine of concentration of agriculture was dis- 
proved. The census showed that each hundred hec- 
tares of land under cultivation was divided among 
the following groups in the following proportions : 



Size of Holding 


1882 


1895 


Gain or Loss 


Below 2 hectares 


5.73 


S.56 


—0.17 


2 -5 


10.01 


10. 1 1 


+0.10 ) 1.26 

+1.16 y 


5 -20 


28.74 


29.90 


20 -50 " 


22.52 


21.87 


—0.65 1 


50 -100 " 


8.57 


8.48 


— 0.09 


100 -200 " 


4-77 


4.75 


— 0.02 v — ^33 
—0.45 


200 -500 " 


9.92 


9-47 


500 -1,000 " 


7.52 


7.40 


— 0.12 J 


Over 1,000 " 


2.22 


2.46 


-fo.24 



^*"The agrarian program submitted to the agrarian com- 
mission should be rejected, for it places before the peasantry 



66 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

In words instead of figures, this table means that the 
middle-sized farms (20 hectares = nearly 50 acres) 
which can be taken care of by a peasant family with- 
out the help of wage labor are on the increase.^^ These 
data have impressed all unprejudiced economists as 
showing that the farmer who depends upon his 
family has a distinct advantage over the landowner 
who has to depend upon hired farmhands. The 
farms ranging from two to twenty hectares have 
gained in thirteen years not less than 659,259 
hectares, while those ranging from twenty to one 
thousand hectares have actually lost 86,809 hec- 
tares. 

The statistical data of other countries yield more of 
less the same results. No theory of concentration of 
agriculture or of the doom of the small farmer can be 
based, for example, on the figures given by our United 
States census reports : ^^ 



the prospect of an improvement in their position, as well as 
the strengthening of their private property rights." Ibid., p. 
204. 

"" Interesting in this respect are the conclusions drawn from 
the data of the German census by Professor Rauchberg in his 
article on " Entwicklungstendbenzen der deutschen Volkswirt- 
schaft" in Archiv fur soziale Gesetzgehung und Statistik (1901), 
XII, pp. 339 et seq. For a short digest of the census material re- 
lating to agriculture, see Dr. G. von Mayr's Allgemeines statis- 
tisches Archiv (1898), V, pp. 658-675. 

^^ Abstract of the Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900 
(Washington, 1902), p. 217. 



CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION 67 









Average Number 


Year 


Number of 


Number of 


OF ACRES TO 




Farms 


ACRES 


A Farm 


1900 


s^m^zn 


838,591,774 


146.2 


1890 


4,564,641 


623,218,619 


136.5 


1880 


4,008,907 


536,081,835 


1337 


1870 


2,659,985 


407,735,041 


1533 


i860 


2,044,077 


407,212,538 


199-2 


1850 


1,449,073 


293,560,614 


202.6 



In America the average acreage is still too large for 
intensive cultivation, and with increasing land values, 
we may confidently expect a very considerable decen- 
tralization.^^ For Holland, Bernstein ^^ quotes the fol- 
lowing data : 



Size of Farms 


Number of Farms 


Increase or 
Decrease 


Percentage 


(IN Hectares) 


1884 


1893 


I -5 
5 -10 
10-50 
Over 50 


66,842 
31,552 
48,278 

3,554 


77,7^7 

94,199 

51,940 

3,510 


+10,925 
4-62,647 
+ 3,662 
— 44 


+ 16 
+198.5 
+ 7.6 
— 1.2 



In Friedrich Hertz's instructive book a large amount 
of statistical material is to be found, all showing the 



'■^ " Land values tend to rise with growing prosperity. A given 
capital thus represents a constantly diminishing acreage, and it 
becomes increasingly profitable to apply more labor and minor 
machines to small areas rather than large capital and vast 
machines to great areas. That is, we have a tendency to more 
intensive rather than large-scale farming." Seligmanj Principles 
of Economics, p. 336. 

^^ Bernstein, Voraussetsungen des Sozialismus, p. 62. 



68 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

non-existence of any tendency towards centralization 
of agriculture.^^ 

Eduard David, the well-known socialist leader, who 
is unquestionably the most learned socialist authority 
on all agricultural questions, has come to the conclu- 
sion that the peasants are getting the better of the 
large landowners *^ and that their standard of life is 
rising rapidly, the agricultural life of to-day being a 
life of great comfort as compared with that of the 
preceding generation.*^ David, of course, is not an 
orthodox Marxian, but a " revisionist." 

We see accordingly, that while concentration in in- 
dustry and commerce is far from complete centraliza- 
tion, no tendency towards concentration exists in agri- 
culture. 

Marxian socialism, as has been sufficiently shown, 
is not the scheme of would-be world-reformers. 
Socialism is to be the inevitable result of certain con- 
ditions and tendencies. It is to be the heir of capital- 
ism. It will step into its heritage when capitalism has 
developed a centralized and socialized mode of pro- 
duction and has created a thoroughly proletarized, 
class-conscious and revolutionary population. For 
this reason the figures and facts above presented are 

^^ F. O. HertZj Die agrarischen Fragen im Verh'dltniss sum 
Sozialismus (Wien, 1899). See also Shippel's estimate of Hertz's 
book, " Hertz gegen Kautsky," Sosialistische Monatshefte, 1899, 
pp. 507-510. 

*° David, Sosialismus und Landwirtschaft (Berlin, 1903), I, 
pp. 50, 51. " David, op. cit., I, p. 36. 



CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION 69 

of vital significance to scientific socialism. If certain 
conditions and tendencies make socialism inevitable, 
do not the absence of these conditions and the exist- 
ence of contrary tendencies make socialism impossi- 
ble? True to the letter and true to the spirit of the 
Marxian doctrine was Kautsky when he wrote : " So 
long as the artisan feels himself to be an artisan, the 
peasant a peasant, the small trader a small trader, so 
long as they possess a strong class-consciousness, they 
must, no matter how ill they fare, steadfastly adhere 
to private ownership of the means of production and 
remain inaccessible to socialism." *^ 

*^ Karl Kautsky, Das Erfurter Programm in seinem grund- 
sdtdichen Theil erldutert (2d ed., Stuttgart, 1892), p. 180. 



CHAPTER V 

CONCERNING THE DISAPPEARANCE OF 
THE MIDDLE CLASS 

The centralization of production in industry and 
agriculture has, according to Marx, a political side : it 
proletarizes the masses. The economic development, 
therefore, not only paves the way technically for so- 
cialist production but also produces the political force 
that is to put an end to capitalism. Or, as Marx 
expresses himself : " Not only has the bourgeoisie 
forged the weapons that bring death to itself, it has 
also called into existence the men who are to wield 
those weapons, the modern working class, the prole- 
tarians." ^ 

We have seen in the preceding pages that so far 
as agriculture is concerned there is, if anything, a 
slight decentralization of production. Consequently 
the proletarization of the farming class may be dis- 
missed from consideration. In industry the situation 
is different. Here concentration has taken place, and 
it is claimed that the masses have been correspondingly 
or more than correspondingly proletarized. Let us 
try to find out, therefore, exactly what is meant by 
"proletariat" and ''proletarization of the masses." 

^Communist Manifesto, p. 22. 
70 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 71 

Marx tells us that " in proportion as the bourgeoisie, 
i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the 
proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a 
class of laborers who live only so long as they find 
work, and who find work only so long as their labor 
increases capital." ^ The official interpreter of present- 
day orthodox Marxism, Karl Kautsky, explains to us 
wherein the factory hands of to-day differ not only 
from the artisan and farmer of the past, who owned 
the means of production and were therefore inde- 
pendent, but also from the journeymen of the pre-cap- 
italistic epoch. The latter, he says, '' belonged to the 
family of the master, with the expectation of becoming 
some day masters themselves. The proletarian stands 
entirely on his own feet and is doomed to remain for- 
ever a proletarian." ^ 

This Marxian conception of the proletarian as a 
modern product involves an idealization of the past. 
As a matter of fact, the little we actually know about 
the conditions which prevailed in mediaeval industry 
gives us no intimation of a golden age, but rather a 
record of woe and distress. In making this statement 
I do not refer simply to the period of the so-called 
decay of the guild system, when the masters, as we 
are told, were primarily bent on exploiting the journey- 
men and keeping them out of the guilds; on the con- 
trary, I include the entire epoch in which the guilds 
flourished. I see no necessity for differentiating this 

^ Ibid. ^ Kautsky, Das Erfiirter Programm, pp. ZZ, 34- 



^2 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

epoch into historical periods, because I can find no 
fundamental points of difference. We all know that 
as early as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 
there were bitter struggles between the journeymen 
and the masters. The master blacksmiths of Frank- 
fort, first organized as a guild in 1377, entered in 1383 
into an ironclad agreement with the guilds of Worms, 
Speyer, Mainz, Bingen and four or five other German 
cities to keep their journeymen under control and in 
submission.* The same situation existed in other parts 
of Germany and in other European countries. In 
Danzig, for instance, the beginning of the struggle 
between masters and journeymen followed immedi- 
ately upon the organization of the guilds. In 1385 the 
journeymen were striking and the city authorities were 
threatening to cut off their ears.^ In France, the 
" family relations '' of masters and journeymen were 
characterized by strikes and riots, leading to blood- 
shed.® In Rheims, as early as 1292, the masters were 

* Cf. ScHANZ, Gesellenverbdnde, p. 42. 

^ KuLiSHER, Evolucia pribili s kapitala (1906), I, pp. 419, 420; 
also Schonlank's article " Gesellenverbande " in the fourth vol- 
ume of Conrad's Handworterbuch fur die Staatswissenschaften. 

^ "The history of the towns of Brie and Champagne is full of 
internal crises which remind one of the strikes and riots of 
modern times. In 1280 the journeymen drapers of Provins, 
furious at the increase in their hours of work, rose in revolt and 
murdered the mayor. At Chalons what occurred was not of 
such a tragic nature; however, the king had to intervene with 
letters patent to compel the workmen to work morning and 
afternoon." Etienne Martin-Saint-Leon, Histoire des cor- 
porations de metiers (Paris, 1897), p. 280. 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 73 

enjoined from combining against their journeymen, 
and the latter from conspiring against their masters/ 
Nor does England show any lack of evidence that its 
journeymen regarded themselves as a separate class, 
antagonistic to the masters. As early as 1350 and 
1362 London ordinances were adopted to put an end 
to journeymen's strikes.^ Not only do we find in 
fourteenth-century England a special journeyman 
class, composed of workmen who have little hope of 
ever becoming masters, who are confronted with pro- 
hibitive entrance fees for admission into the mystery, 
but in some trades the masters have gone so far as 
to exact an oath from apprentices that they will not 
set up in business for themselves, even if they can, 
unless their masters shall give thereto their special 
consent. We see the legislature and town council try- 
ing to intervene in favor of the journeymen. As Pro- 

' Ibid. 

^ " Whereas, heretofore, if there was any dispute between a 
master in the trade and his man (vadlett), such man has been 
wont to go to all the men within the city of the same trade, 
and then, by covin and conspiracy between them made, they 
would order that no one among them should work or serve his 
own master, until the said master and his servant or man had 
come to an agreement ; by reason whereof the masters in the 
said trade have been in great trouble, and the people left un- 
served; it is ordained, that from henceforth, if there be any 
dispute moved between any master and his man in the trade, 
such dispute shall be settled by the wardens of the trade." W. J. 
Ashley, Introduction to English Economic History and Theory 
(New York, 1893), H, P- 104. 



74 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

fessor Ashley justly observes, " the evil must have been 
unendurable before the town council would interfere; 
for in most places the mysteries were so powerful that 
the municipal authorities were only too ready to sup- 
port the master-craftsmen.^ 

Marx was not unaware of the difference between 
mediaeval masters and journeymen when he was de- 
veloping, in the opening lines of his Manifesto, his 
doctrine of class-struggle; but whenever he discussed 
the city proletariat as a product of modern capitalism, 
totally and fundamentally differing from any working 
class in the past, he ignored the extent to which those 
journeymen were a class. 

In some degree, however, Marx's failure to distin- 
guish between masters and journeymen in the Middle 
Ages is justifiable. The difference in economic well- 
being between the so-called independent master, the 
possessor of the so-called " means of production," and 
his dependent hired men was slight. We have the 
English laws and regulations concerning wages from 
25 Edward III (1350). These regulations fixed the 
maximum wage for laborers and artificers. The em- 
ployer who should pay, as well as the artisan who 
should demand and receive, higher wages than those 
enacted, were to be fined and severely punished. The 
schedules of wages were revised and changed by suc- 
cessive legislatures, and they therefore afford an in- 

® Ibid., p. 105. 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 75 

sight into the actual economic conditions and standard 
of Hving of those independent producers of the Middle 
Ages who appeal so strongly to our imagination. From 
the Statute of Laborers we learn that the artisans were 
to be sworn twice a year to observe the regulations. 
Their wages were settled in 1350 in the following 
proportion : ^^ 

From Easter to Michaelmas, without Diet 

A master carpenter by the day 3c? 

A master free mason by the day 4d 

Other carpenters by the day 2d 

Other masons by the day sd 

Their servants by the day i^^d 

Tilers by the day sd 

Their knaves by the day I'jAd 

Other coverers of fern and straw by the day 3d 

Their knaves by the day i]^d 

Plasterers and other workers of mud- walls by the day. 3d 
Their knaves by the day i^^d 

The purchasing power of these wages is indicated by 
the allowance made for food, i.e., by the difference 
in the wages of artisans with and without diet. For 
the following century, when wages were somewhat 
higher, we have wage lists showing this difference, and 
the cost of food per day for one man or woman is 
taken to be from three half-pennies to two pence, 

^° Cf. Sir Frederick Morton Eden, The State of the Poor, or 
an History of the Laboring Classes in England (London, 1797), 
I, P- 2)3- " In 1360 the Statute of Laborers was confirmed by Par- 
liament, and the observance of it enforced under penalty of 
imprisonment for fifteen days and burning in the forehead with 
an iron in the form of the letter F." Ihid., p. 36. 



76 



MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 



usually two pence. Here is the wage list of the year 
1496, with and without diet : " 



A free mason 

A master carpenter 

A rough mason 

A bricklayer 

A master tiler 

A plumber 

A glazier 

A carver 

A joiner 

Other laborers (except in 
harvest) 

Master carpenters and ma- 
sons having under them 
six men 



From Easter 
to Michaelmas 



with diet ^d 
' without diet 6d 



\ with diet 2d 
) without diet ^d 

) with diet sd 
f without diet yd 



From Michaelmas 
to Easter 



with diet 3d 
without diet Srf 



with diet i>^£^ 
without diet z<i 



In Harvest 

Every mower by the day with diet ^d, without 6d 
A reaper " 3d, " sd 

A carter " 3d, " 5^^ 

A woman and other laborers " 2^0?, " 4>2C^ 



The master, we observe, when employed, is allowed 
three times the cost of his own food for the feeding 
of himself, wife and family, housing, clothing and 
other necessities — a standard of life to which the 
proletarian of to-day has no cause to look back with 
envy or regret. 

The wages in other trades are similar. 



Ibid., p. 75. 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS '77 

With meat Without meat 
and drink and drink 

A master ship-carpenter having \ 

charge of the work and having >• sd yd 

men under him ) 

Another ship-carpenter called ^l Ad f^d 

hewer ) 

An able clincher 
An holder 
A master caulker 
Another mean caulker 
A caulker laboring by the tide, for ) . 

every tide S 

From Michaelmas to Candlemas the wages of these 
artificers are to be it/ a day less. 

Wages gradually increased, but it is doubtful if 
they increased more rapidly than the cost of living. 
Sir George Nicholls gives us the following table : 



Zd 


Sd 


3d 


Sd 


4d 


6d 


3d 


Sd 



Artificers without diet 
Laborers without diet 



1: 

1; 





1495 


1593 


1610 


in summer 


6d 


8d 


lod 


in winter 


Sd 


7d 


Sd 


in summer 


4d 


Sd 


yd 


in winter 


3d 


4d 


6d 



His comment upon these figures is : " On the whole, 
then, it may, I think, be assumed that at the end of 
Elizabeth's reign, notwithstanding the increase which 
had taken place in the price of all commodities, the 
great mass of the English people were able, by a due 
exercise of industry, to obtain as large an amount of 
subsistence and physical enjoyment as at any former 
period." ^' 

^' Sir George Nicholls, A History of the English Poor Law 
in connection with the State of the Country and the Condition 



78 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

The alleged welfare of the laboring class of the past 
as compared with our proletariat of to-day may there- 
fore be seriously questioned. But in the course of 
centuries certain relations and regulations had worked 
themselves out, which insured at least the bare exist- 
ence of the master and of the laboring man. The 
industrial revolution brushed aside all the old regula- 
tions, substituting for them " industrial liberty." The 
modern proletariat is a legitimate child of this indus- 
trial liberty, which for a few decades seriously ag- 
gravated the conditions of the laboring population. 
The industrial transformation, the centralization of 
scattered industry, and the resultant concentration of 
workingmen in large cities tended to consolidate this 
laboring population into a class and added greatly to 
its political significance. 

The dynamic conception of society and its structure 
— the conviction that no type of social order is per- 
manent and immutable, that the social order is subject 
to change and rational improvement — this conception, 
foreign to the modern world before the eighteenth 
century and the French Revolution, opened new vistas 
and possibilities to the laboring men as well as to their 
masters. They were allies without distinction in their 
struggle, in the name of democracy, against the old 
feudal order. But very soon the hopes and prophecies 
of democracy were differentiated. The interpretations 

of the People (new edition, New York, 1898), vol. i, pp. 204-225. 
See also pp. 79-81, 100, loi, 135, 155, 269-271 and 356. 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 79 

put upon the word varied so greatly that those differ- 
ing in its interpretation began to regard each other 
as belonging to a dangerous and undesirable class. Is 
it not natural that men who are tied during the long 
day to a machine in the factory, and who sleep in 
dingy tenements, should look forward to something 
better; that men who have so little else should have 
a wealth of hope? 

In their visions the laboring masses of to-day 
certainly differ from the plehs mis era of past cen- 
turies. Their aspirations stamp them as a modern 
product. They hope for industrial democracy, and 
this hope is based on a reasonable expectation that the 
political efforts of enfranchised citizens will result in 
ultimate success. The industrial proletariat of to-day , 
is therefore not so much a new economic entity as a ] 
new politico-psychological element in our body pol- j 
itic.^^ If the sole characteristic of an industrial pro- 

^^ It is almost incredible that a man like Sombart, who made 
a reputation as an exponent of the proletarian movement and 
its theory, should in his recent booklet give the following char- 
acterization of the proletarian : " Der Proletarier weiss ebenso 
wenig von einer Dorf- und Geschlechtergemeinschaft wie von 
einer Familiengemeinschaft, ebenso wenig von einer Berufs- 
gemeinschaft wie von einer Arbeitsgemeinschaft. Er ist verein- 
zelt, vereinsamt, mit seinen Genossen nicht enger verbunden als 
das einzelne Sandkorn mit dem andern im grossen Sandhaufen. 
Wie ein vom Baum gewehtes Blatt das der Wind iiber die Fluren 
treibt." Werner Sombart, Das Proletariat: Bilder und Studien, 
p. 14. If this were true, there would be no proletarian move- 
ment. In an earlier book Sombart gave us a more sensible 
description of the psychological makeup of the proletariat: "In 



8o MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

letariat were poverty, there would be nothing new in 
the proletariat of to-day. The poverty in merry Eng- 
land was appalling, but England was merry; we are 
told that in one reign 70,000 paupers and vagabonds 
were executed, but we are not told that it made 
any political impression. It is not uninteresting 
to note that two of the ablest Russian states- 
men of the time of Nicholas I, Count Kisseleff and 
Count Cancrin, argued in favor of agricultural pov- 
erty as compared with industrial wealth, because of 
fear of the political significance of an industrial pro- 
letariat.^* Recent history has proved that, from their 
point of view, they were right. Not the starving 

the tenement houses, the huge manufactories, the pubHc houses 
for meetings and for pleasures, the individual proletarian, as if 
forsaken by God and man, finds himself with his companions 
in misery again together, as members of a new and gigantic 
organism. Here are new societies forming, and the new com- 
munities bear the communistic stamp, because of modern methods 
of work. And they develop, grow, establish themselves in the 
mass of men, in proportion as the charm of separate existence 
fades from the individual ; the more dreary the attic room in the 
suburb of the city, the more attractive is the new social center 
in which the outcast finds himself again treated as a man. The 
individual disappears, the companion emerges. A uniform class 
consciousness matures itself, also the habit of communal work 
and pleasure. So much for the psychology of the proletariat." 
SoMBART, Socialism and the Social Movement of the Nineteenth 
Century, translated by Anson P. Atterbury (Chicago, 1902), pp. 

14, IS- 

^* [Cancrin], Die Oekonomie der menschlichen Gesellschaften 
und das Finanzwesen, von einem ehemaligen Finanzminister 
(Stuttgart, 1845), pp. 59, 60. Cf. Zablocki-Dessyatkovski, 
Count Kisseleff and His Times (St. Petersburg, 1882), II, p. I99- 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 8i 

millions of peasantry but the comparatively small in- 
dustrial proletariat has precipitated and carried on the 
Russian revolution. 

In gathering scattered production modern industry 
has gathered and united the scattered v^orkers; and 
in so far as these men work and live under the same 
conditions and have the same interests they are bound 
to develop a comradeship and fellow-feeling which 
could not flourish in the same degree in the past. In 
this sense it is quite true that with the advent of 
modern industry a new economic and political element, 
the industrial proletariat, has made its appearance. 
The significance of the proletariat as a class will be 
discussed later. For the moment we are occupied with 
the Marxian view of the '' proletarization of the 
masses." 

In 1847, when German industry was in its begin- 
nings, Marx informed us, in his Manifesto, that the 
proletariat class formed the great majority of the peo- 
ple. " All previous historical movements," he wrote, 
" were movements of minorities, or in the interest of 
minorities. The proletarian movement is the self- 
conscious, independent movement of the immense ma- 
jority, in the interest of the immense majority." ^^ 
What is meant here by the " proletariat " ? Sim- 
ply poor people? Not to-day only, but throughout 
the historic period of our society, the poor people have 
constituted the overwhelming majority. But that 
^^ Communist Manifesto, p. 30. 



82 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

could scarcely encourage Marx. What reason had he 
to suppose that in the future this majority would feel 
and act otherwise than it had felt and acted in the 
past?^« 

Marx fully realized that poverty as such creates no 
radical or revolutionary class. The defeat of the so- 
cialist projects of the Paris proletariat and the election 
of a Louis Bonaparte were ascribed by Marx himself 
to the poor French peasantry.^^ The Lumpenprole- 
tariat, also the pauper and dependent class, Marx him- 
self excluded from the proletarian army, and for good 
reasons : " The social scum, that passively rotting mass 
thrown off by the lowest layers of an old society, may, 
here and there, be swept into the movement by a pro- 
letarian revolution ; its conditions of life, however, pre- 
pare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of re- 

^*' That the majority is but a beast of burden in spite of its 
apparent power, Marx's seventeenth-century forerunner, Cam- 
panella, had said in a sonnet worth quoting : " The people is a 
fat and motley beast, ignorant of its own prowess and hence 
enduring burdens, lash and cudgel. Driven it is by a feeble 
child, whom it could shake off in an instant. But it fears that 
child, and so it serves all its whims and fancies, never reahzing 
how much it itself is feared by that very child. . . . Marvelous 
thing! They hang themselves with their own hands and send 
themselves to jail and bring upon themselves war and death 
for a single farthing, paid to them out of the many that they 
themselves have given to the king. Everything between heaven 
and earth belongs to them, but they do not know it, and should 
any one tell them that, they would knock that man down and 
kill him." Tommaso Campanella, Opere, scelte da Alessandro 
Ancona (Torino, 1854), p. 79. 

^^ Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, trans- 
lated by Daniel De Leon (New York, 1898), p. 71. 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 83 

actionary intrigue." ^^ It is obvious, therefore, that 
Marx, in talking about the proletariat, has in mind 
men and women employed in capitalistic industry. 

Now in 1895, nearly half a century after the Mani- 
festo was published, the number of men and women 
employed in all capitalistic enterprises, in industry, 
commerce and transportation, was, according to Som- 
bart's calculation, based on the German census, 
3,921,571. Deducting from this number the employees 
of an obviously non-proletarian grade, managers, su- 
perintendents, higher employees, officials, etc., he esti- 
mates that the rest number about three and one-half 
millions, or about thirteen to fourteen per cent of the 
population. ^^ Accordingly, even now, a movement 
that should include the whole of the industrial pro- 
letariat would still be far from being a movement of 
the " immense majority." 

But we are told that the masses are rapidly being 
proletarized, that the middle class is rapidly sinking 
in the proletariat. " As we have already seen," so 
ran the statement of the Manifesto, ^' entire sections 
of the ruling classes are, by the advance of industry, 
precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threat- 
ened in their conditions of existence. These also 
supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlighten- 
ment and progress." '^^ What makes socialism inevita- 



^® The Communist Manifesto, p. 29. 
^^ SoMBART, Dds Proletariat, p. 5. 
^^ The Communist Manifesto, p. 28. 



84 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

ble, Engels tells us, is on the one hand the concentra- 
tion of capital in the possession of a few and on the 
other hand the concentration of the propertyless 
masses in the large cities. ^^ Here is the core of Marx- 
ian socialism. Not only is the middle class gradually 
being wiped out, but the lesser capitalists are gradu- 
ally being reduced to proletarian existences, swallowed 
up by the greater capitalists. Thus the capitalistic 
band becomes smaller and smaller, while the army of 
the proletariat grows by thousands and by millions. 
And while capital is thus being concentrated in few 
hands, industry becomes more and more socialized on 
a national, even international basis. A socialized mode 
of production is then already in existence, and all that 
remains for the complete establishment of a socialist 
commonwealth is the expropriation of the few capital- 
ists by the mass of the people. Socialized production 
is transformed by a simple political act into socialized 
property. But, on so important a point, let Marx 
speak for himself : " As soon as this process of trans- 
formation has sufficiently decomposed the old society 
from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers are turned 
into proletarians and their means of labor into capital, 
as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on 
its own feet, then the further socialization of labor 
and further transformation of the land and other 
means of production into socially exploited and there- 

^^ Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism {Anti-Duehring") , 
translated by A. Lewis (Chicago, 1907), p. 179. 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 85 

fore common means of production, as well as the 
further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a 
new form. That which is now to be expropriated is 
no longer the laborer working for himself, but the 
capitalist exploiting many laborers. This expropria- 
tion is accomplished by the action of the immanent 
laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centraliza- 
tion of capital. One capitalist alzvays kills many.^^ 
Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expro- 
priation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an 
ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the 
labor-process, the conscious technical application of 
science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the 
transformation of the instruments of labor into in- 
struments of labor only usable in common, the econ- 
omizing of all means of production by their use as 
the means of production of combined, socialized labor, 
the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world- 
market, and with this, the international character of 
the capitalist regime. Along with the constantly dimin- 
ishing nnmber of the magnates of capital,^^ who usurp 
and monopolize all advantages of this process of trans- 
formation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slav- 
ery, degradation, exploitation ; but with this too grows 
the revolt of the working class, a class always increas- 
ing in numbers and disciplined, united, organized by 
the very mechanism of the process of capitalist pro- 
duction itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a 

" Italics are mine. • • ^^ Italics mine. 



86 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

fetter upon the mode of production which has sprung 
up and flourished along with and under it. Central- 
ization of the means, of production and socialization 
of labor at last reach a point where they become incom- 
patible with their capitalist integument. This integu- 
ment is burst asunder. The knell of capitalistic private 
property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. 
. . . The transformation of scattered private prop- 
erty, arising from individual labor, into capitalistic 
private property is, naturally, a process incomparably 
more protracted, violent and difficult than the trans- 
formation of capitalistic private property, already 
practically resting on socialized production, into so- 
cialized property. In the former case, we had the 
expropriation of the mass of the people by a few 
usurpers; in the latter, we have the expropriation of 
a few usurpers by the mass of the people." ^* 

If Marx has correctly formulated the economic 
tendency, if capital tends invariably towards concen- 
tration in the hands of a narrowing circle of m'agnates 
while the rest of the population is rapidly being pro- 
letarized, it is really marvelous that a social revolution 
has not yet overtaken this iniquitous system, to which 
practically the whole of the people must be opposed. 
If the capitalist class, which alone has any real in- 
terest in the protection of property, is rapidly dimin- 

^* Marx, Capital (English translation, 4th ed., London, 1891), 
I, pp. 788, 789. 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 87 

isliing; if the future has nothing in store for the self- / 
respecting middle class but misery and degradation; j 
then indeed it takes no prophet to foretell that the title ! 
of the few magnates to their wealth is not worth the I 
paper on which it is written. Then indeed are thel^ 
days of the present economic organization numbered;! 
and Bebel was quite right when, in addressing his 
party convention in 1891, he declared: "Yes, I am 
convinced that the realization of our ultimate aims is 
so near th^t there are but few in this hall who will not 
live to see that day." ^^ 

Let us, however, test the abstract proposition by the 
facts. Let us take, for example, the Prussian income 
statistics. The Prussian statistics, as we all know, are 
relatively the mo^t accurate in existence."'^ In Prussia 
we have data of a graduated income tax for over half 
a century, coinciding with the period of the most rapid 
industrial transformation. These data, it is obvious, 
are especially valuable for our purpose. 



^^ Protokoll uber die V erhandlung en des Parteitages der so- 
cialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands, abgehalten zu Erfurt, 
1891, p. 172. 

"® All the figures given below are taken from the two mono- 
graphs of Adolph Wagner, published in the Zeitschrift des 
Koniglich Preussischen Siatistischen Bureau (Berlin, 1904), vol. 
xliv, pp. 41-122; and 229-267: "Zur Methodik der Statistik des 
Volkseinkommens und Volksvermogens, mit besonderer Ceriick- 
sichtigung der Steuerstatistik " and " Weitere statistische Unter- 
suchungen iiber die Verteilung des Volkseinkommens in Preussen 
auf Grund der neuern Einkommensteuerstatistik (1892-1902)." 



88 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

From the point of view of income the German pop- 
ulation is usually divided into three groups: a lower 
class, a middle class and an upper class. Each of these 
three classes is subdivided into three strata: a lower, 
a middle and an upper. They represent the following 
individual yearly incomes : 

Mower stratum up to 500 marks.*' 

I. Lower class. < middle " 500 to 900 

( upper " 900 to 2,100 

f lower " 2,100 to 3,000 

II. Middle class, -j middle " 3,000 to 6,000 

' upper " 6,000 to 9,500 

f lower " 9,500 to 30,500 

III. Upper class. •< middle " 30,500 to 100,000 

V upper " over 100,000 

The following table shows, at ten periods during the 
fifty years 185 3- 1902, the absolute number of persons 
in the upper stratum of the lower class and the lower 
stratum of the middle class, and the absolute number 
and percentage of persons in the middle and upper 
strata of the middle class and in the upper class. All 
the figures given in the first three columns are thou- 
sands (000 omitted). 

^^ Incomes below 500 marks are now extremely rare in Ger- 
many; they represent as a rule the lower agricultural laboring 
class. In the 500-900-marks group belong the poor peasantry 
and the poorly-paid workingmen. The 900-2, lOO-marks group 
includes clerks and salesmen, skilled workingmen, younger of- 
ficials, public school teachers, well-to-do peasants, artisans and 
petty store- and saloon-keepers. Specially skilled mechanics are 
often found in the lower stratum of the middle-class group with 
incomes of 2,100-3,000 marks. 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 89 



Year 


Population 


Number Taxed on 
Incomes 


Percentage 

TAXED ON 


900 TO 3000 
MARKS 


OVER 3,000 
MARKS 


INCOMES OVER 
3000 MARKS 


1853 

1867 

1870 

1873 

1878 

1882 

1891 

1892 

1896 

1902 


16,870 

19,157 
23,909 
24,644 
■ 25,748 
26,820 
29,456 
29,895 
31,349 
35,551 


825 
963 
1,319 
1,370 
1,356 
1,304 

1,743 
2,119 
2,321 
3,310 


44.4 

72.9 

106.4 

123.3 
167.3 
162.6 

254-3 
316.9 

33I-I 

449-7 


0.263 
0.380 

0.445 
0.500 
0.650 
0.683 
0.863 
1.060 

1-057 
I.3OI 



The absolute number of middle- and upper-class tax- 
payers in the same years are given in the following 
table. The figures in the first column are thousands. 







Middle Class Incomes 


Upper Class 












Incomes 


Year 
















2100 TO 


3000 TO 


6000 TO 


9500 TO 


30,500 to 


Over 




3000 


6000 


9500 


30,500 


100,000 


100,000 


1853 


46.9 


32,003 


7,239 


4,463 


640 


62 


1867 


81.I 


50,966 


12,224 


8,211 


1,348 


144 


1870 


1 12.4 


75,851 


17,434 


11,027 


1,911 


199 


1873 


1 19.6 


85,603 


20,813 


13,650 


2,815 


423 


1878 


153-5 


121,071 


25,350 


17,457 


3,054 


375 


1882 


150.0 


131,310 


27,958 


19,580 


3,403 


434 


1891 


185-I 


180,862 


38,275 


28,776 


5,442 


915 


1892 


223.4 


204,544 


55,561 


46,092 


9,034 


1.658 


1896 


260.1 


214,960 


57,859 


47,308 


9,265 


1,699 


1902 


321.3 


291,341 


77,638 


64,737 


13,205 


2,762 



We see from these figures how utterly unwarranted 
is the idea of the proletarization of the middle class. 
With all due allowance for the increased cost of living, 
we find the number of the well-to-do absolutely and 



90 



MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 



relatively to the whole population on the increase. The 
same is true about the very rich. 

The following little table gives the growth of the 
multimillionaire incomes in Prussia during the same 
period : 





Incomes 


Year 


100,000 TO 
500,000 


500,000 TO 
1,000,000 


1,000,000 TO 
2,000,000 


Over 

2,000,000 


1853 

1867 

1870 

1873 

1875 

1882 

1891 

1892 

1896 

1902 


60 
135 
187 
391 

399 

407 

859 
1,555 
1,596 
2,594 


2 

9 
12 
32 
18 

22 

43 

-72 

76 

108 


4 

2 

8 

27 

20 

44 


4 
3 
5 
4 
7 
16 



Marx's formula " One capitalist always kills many," 
can hardly be regarded as a statement of fact. In 
1854 Berlin had only six men possessing over three 
million marks; in 1900 it had 639 in this class. In 
1854 there were in Berlin 23 men who possessed a 
million and a half each; in 19CX) there were 1,323 in 
this group. And with all due respect to German hon- 
esty, it is well to remember that men are not likely 
to overestimate either their income or the value of 
their property when it comes to paying taxes. 

The English income statistics present greater dif- 
ficulties, owing to their arrangement in schedules, 
every taxpayer declaring his income on different 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 91 

schedules according to its character and source. If we 
take the incomes assessed under Schedule D, incomes 
from trades and professions, we find for the decade 
1 877- 1 886 the following changes : 



Incomes 


1877 


1886 


Percentage 
OF Change 


Between £150 and ii,ooo. . . 
ii,ooo and upwards 


317,939 
22,848 


379,064 
22,298 


+19.26 
— 2.40 



These figures led Goshen, then chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer, to enunciate the thesis of a decentralization 
of wealth. The period was one of depression, how- 
ever. The data of tax assessments under Schedule D 
for the following decade do not show the same ultra- 
democratic tendency. 



Incomes 


1888-89 


1893-94 


Percentage of 
Change 


£150 and under £500. . . . 
£500 and under £1,000. . . 
£1,000 and under £5,000. 
£5,000 and over 


347,520 

31,084 

18,665 

2,96s 


362,048 

2>2,n7 
20,431 

3,149 


+4.18 
+5-32 
+9.46 

-1-6.21 







Incomes 28 



Exceeding £160 and not exceeding 
£500 

Exceeding £500 and not exceeding 
£1,000 

Exceeding £1,000 and not exceeding 
£5,000 

Exceeding £5,000 and over 



1894-95 



278,370 

26,790 

17,146 
2,785 



1897-5 



306,200 
27,779 

18,113 
3,141 



Percentage 
OF Change 



+10.00 
+ 3.69 

+ 5.64 
+ 2.78 



Note the change of the lower limit from £150 to £160. 



92 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

These fluctuations of incomes from trades and pro- 
fessions under Schedule D do not substantiate Goshen's 
premature thesis of the decrease of great wealth, but 
they undoubtedly indicate a steady growth of the 
middle class. It must be borne in mind that these 
figures do not include the incomes of the taxpayers as 
shareholders of companies, whose profits are assessed 
in the lump. And the army of stockholders presents 
a steady and enormous growth. In 1887 Goshen 
wrote : '' I have examined the figures of twelve com- 
panies, taken entirely at random — an insurance com- 
pany, a water-works company, an industrial company, 
and so forth, and I have compared their capital and 
the number of shareholders ten years ago with the 
capital and the number of shareholders at present. 
Here is the result: the total paid-up capital of the 
twelve companies in 1876 was £5,171,649; in 1886 it 
had become £6,501,582, an increase of 25 per cent. 
But the shareholders in them had increased during the 
same ten years from 11,667 to 20,083, ^^ increase of 
^2. per cent." ^^ 

Here we come to a point which Marx has obviously 
overlooked: the economic significance of the joint- 
stock company. The assumption that centralization of 
industry signifies centralization of ownership and cap- 
ital is false. The opposite is the economic tendency; 
^and this fact is acknowledged by such enlightened and 

^® Viscount Goshen, Essays and Addresses on Economic 
Questions (London, 1905), pp. 231, 232. 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 93 

scholarly socialists as Eduard Bernstein.^" In Eng- 
land, in recent years, numbers of smaller firms have 
been merged in larger stock companies. On April i, 
1904, there were 37,287 such stock companies regis- 
tered in England, many of these companies represent- 
ing consolidations of a number of industrial or com- 
mercial firms, but the organization as joint-stock com- 
panies meant a wider distribution of both income and 
ownership. Here is an example : 



Name of Company 


Capitaliza- 
tion 


Stocks 
Retained by 
the Vendors 


Number 
OF Firms 
Amalga- 
mated 


Number 

OF 

Stock- 
holders 


Fine Cotton Spinners 

Bradford Coal Dyers. 

Bradford Coal Mer- 
chants 

Aberdeen Comb 
Works 

Cooper, Cooper and 
Johnson 


£4,000,000 
3,000,000 

199,790 

300,000 

340,000 


ii,333,350 
1,000,000 

119,790 

^33,333 
70,000 


31 

22 

8 
3 
3 


3,934 
10,731 

237 

677 

2,082 




^7,839,790 


£2,656,473 


67 


17,661 



Instead of 67 firms, 17,661 stockholders. True, about 
one-third of stock, probably suf^cient to insure the 
control of the enterprises, was retained by the original 
firms, but the remaining two-thirds were distributed. 
The members of the original 67 firms have probably 

^" Eduard Bernstein, Die hentige Einkommensbewegung und 
die Aufgabe der Volkswirtschaft (Berlin, 1902). See especially 
chapter iii (pp. 24-32) on " Die Conzentrierung der Unter- 
nehmungen und die Dezentralisierung der Eigentumstitel." 



94 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

become employees of the five new companies; but the 
change in their position is hardly to be viewed as a case 
of " proletarization," since, in addition to their salaries 
as company employees, they are receiving dividends 
on two and a half millions' worth of stock. The 
above example is characteristic of the whole recent in- 
dustrial development. In five English brewing con- 
cerns we find that the stock is held by 27,052 persons. 
" Thomas Lipton," the grocery trust, has 74,262 share- 
holders ; " Spiers and Pond " in London has 4,650 
stockholders, and of these but 550 hold more than 
£500 worth of stock. 

The development of stock companies explains why 
the number of moderate incomes from trades and pro- 
fessions, taxed under Schedule D, has not recently 
increased as rapidly as in the seventies and eighties. 
A large number of small tradesmen formerly assessed 
under Schedule D are now assessed as employees of 
public companies under Schedule E.^^ If we exclude 
from this schedule the eighty-odd thousand army, 
navy and civil-service employees, we find that the num- 
ber of employees of corporate bodies and of public 
companies increased more than one hundred per cent 
in fifteen years. The figures are: 

1888-89. ...130,862 1894-95.... 1 55,752'' 1898-99. ...223,391 
1893-94 166,161 1897-98 — 187,240 1902-03 272,500 

^^ Goshen, op. cit., p. 249. 

^'This decrease is due to the raising of the exemption limit 
from £150 to ii6o. 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 95 

The same rapid growth of the army of stockholders 
is to be found in the United States. Some of our 
principal railroads, for example, show the following 
increases in the numbers of shareholders during the 
last four years : 

1904 1908 

Pennsylvania 42,100 59,6oo 

Atchison 17,800 25,000 

New York Central 1 1,700 22,000 

Union Pacific 14,200 15,000 

Southern Pacific 4,400 15,000 

Great Western 5,90o 10,000 

Erie 4,300 10,000 

Delaware and Hudson 3,8o3 5,8oo 

Norfolk and Western 2,900 4,500 

Chesapeake and Ohio i,5oo 2,600 

The American railroads count to-day about half a 
million stockholders as against 350,000 five years ago. 
The same decentralizing tendency is discernible in 
our industrial companies. The United States Steel 
Corporation counts to-day about 110,000 stockholders; 
the Bell Telephone, 24,100; American Sugar, 20,000; 
Amalgamated Copper, 18,000; Pullman, 13,000. The 
total number of American shareholders is now esti- 
mated to be about 2,000,000. 

Thus, wherever we look, we find a steady increase 
of the middle class. In 185 1 there were in England 
about 300,000 persons with an income of £150-1,000, 
in 1 88 1, about 990,000. While the population during 
that period increased in the ratio of 27.35, ^^e English 
middle class increased in the ratio of 27.90, i.e., 233 



96 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

per cent. In 1898 Bernstein estimated the number of 
middle-class taxpayers at a million and a half.^^ Not 
only has the middle class, whose extermination is so 
essential to the triumph of socialism, greatly in- 
creased,^* but so have the numbers of co-partners of 
the great capitalistic enterprises — the army of stock- 
holders, enlisted in the defense of capital and of vested 
interests.^^ 

It has been argued that Marx's analysis of our 
capitalist system was based on the assumption of 
free competition and failed to take into account the 
economic effects of corporate methods of business, and 
that, if competition were unchecked and there were no 
joint-stock companies, the concentration of capital in 
the hands of the few and the proletarization of the 
middle class would be unavoidable. Possibly this is 

'^ Bernstein, Die V oraussetzungen des Sosialismus und die 
Aufgahen der Sosialdemokratie (Stuttgart, 1899), p. 49. 

^* " Now as a matter of fact, what is the income-tendency of 
the wealthy? As far as statistics on the subject are available, 
they show in every civilized country an extension rather than 
a shrinking of the rich classes." Bernstein, Die heutige Ein- 
kommenhewegung (1902), p. 21. 

^^"The army of stockholders constitutes to-day in every 
respect, poHtically and socially, the bulwark of capital. What 
would the handful of magnates be without the number, mounting 
into the hundred thousands, of middle-class and small stock- 
holders? What could they do against public opinion? Nothing! 
The first storm would break their resistance. But together with 
the magnates of the second, fourth and eighth class, they form 
or sway what is known as public opinion." Bernstein, Die 
heutige Socialdemokratie in Theorie und Praxis (Miinchen, 
1906), p. 32. 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 97 

true; but it is not particularly useful to consider how 
different things would be if things had been different. 
The fact remains that the economic development has 
taken a turn which Marx did not foresee; and Karl 
Kautsky remained a true exponent of orthodox Marx- 
ism, when he exclaimed, at the Stuttgart Socialist Con- 
vention: ''Yes, if that is true, then not only is the 
day of our victory ever to be postponed, but we can 
never reach our aim. If capitalists are on the increase ] 
and not the propertyless, then the development is set- j 
ting us back further and further from our goal, then ' 
capitalism intrenches itself and not socialism, then , 
our hopes will never materialize ! " 



36 



^' Protokoll uber die Verhandlungen des Parteitages der so- 
zialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands, abgehalten zu Stuttgart, 
1898, p. 128. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 

We are told that with the general proletarization of 
the masses, with the concentration of capital and the 
numerical diminution of capitalist magnates, a parallel 
process takes place which makes the existing mode 
of production not only intolerable but untenable. It 
is the progressive impoverishment, the rapidly increas- 
ing misery, the economic sinking and physical degen- 
eration of the proletariat which make a social revolu- 
tion mandatory upon suffering humanity under pain 
of starvation/ In the words of the Communist 
Manifesto: " The modern laborer, . . . instead of 
rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and 
deeper below the conditions of existence of his own 
class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops 
more rapidly than population and wealth. And here 
it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any 
longer to be the ruling class in society and to impose 
its conditions of existence upon society as an over- 
riding law. It is unfit to rule, because it is incom- 
petent to assure an existence to its slave within his 
slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into 
such a state that it has to feed him instead of being 

^ Marx, Capital, p. 789. 
98 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 99 

fed by him. Society can no longer live under this 
bourgeoisie; in other words, its existence is no longer 
compatible with society." ^ This doctrine of increas- 
ing misery, which was later elaborated by Marx in his 
Capital, is based upon observations and facts of his 
time. These facts Marx interpreted theoretically in 
a brilliant way. 

Behind this doctrine of increasing misery was an 
original theory of wages. It was not the '' iron law " 
of wages, as some recent writers claim. ^ There is 
nothing specifically socialistic about the iron law of 
wages. It is Ricardo's theory, to which Lassalle added 
the adjective iron, and which Marx for many excellent 
reasons contemptuously rejected.* The iron law of 
wages, while an effective weapon in the hands of so 
great an agitator as Lassalle, gave as such no reason- 
able assurance that the end of the wage system was 
near. A generation ago wages represented the la- 
borer's cost of living; a generation from now wages 
would, according to the iron law, still represent the 
laborer's cost of living. This theory gives no ground 

^ Communist Manifesto, p. 31. 

^ So, for instance, Rossignol, Orthodox Socialism, pp. 9, 26, 
and W. H. Mallock, Socialism (The National Civic Federation, 
New York, n. d.), p. 10. 

* Marx wrote to Bracke in 1875 : " Of the ' iron law of wages ' 
nothing, as is well known, is Lassalle's own except the word 
* iron ' borrowed from Goethe's phrase, " ewigen, ehernen, grossen 
Gesetzen.' The word ' iron ' is a term whereby those of the 
true faith recognize each other. If, however, I take the law with 
Lassalle's stamp and therefore in his sense, then I must also 
take it with his proof. And what is that ! As Lange pointed 



100 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

for assuming that the wage-earners of the future will 
necessarily oppose the wage system any more than the 
laborers of the past have opposed it. On the other 
hand, a doctrine that declares inevitable a pro- 
gressively increasing misery of the working class gives 
reasonable assurance that the wage-earners will in- 
creasingly and progressively oppose the existing eco- 
nomic system. 

Furthermore, the industrial revolution was followed 
by an era of progressive diminution of wages. Wages 
were obviously sinking rapidly, not only below the 
demands of the standard of living but actually in 
many instances below the possible requirements of 
physical existence. Was this phenomenon taken into 
account by the Ricardian doctrine? In 1835 the Gov- 
ernor-General of India reported : " The misery hardly 
finds a parallel in the history of commerce. The bones 
of the cotton weavers are bleaching the plains of In- 
dia." And the situation of Europe's weavers was not 
much better. Consider, for instance, the following 
official figures, quoted by Professor von Schultze- 

out shortly after Lassalle's death: the Malthusian doctrine of 
population preached by Lange himself. If this, however, is 
correct, then again I can not annul the law even if I abolish the 
wage system a hundred times over, for the law then dominates 
not only the wage system but every social system. Relying on 
this very fact, for fifty years and more economists have shown 
that socialism cannot annul that which is founded on nature, 
but on the contrary can only render it more general, spreading 
it over the surface of society." Neue Zeit, Jahrgang IX (1891), 
vol. i, p. 570. 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY loi 

Gaevernitz : '' On an average good weavers in Bolton 
earned weekly : 

s. d. lbs. wheat flour lbs. oatmeal 

1797-1804 26 8 = 100 or 142 

1804-1811 20 = 79 or 115 

1811-1818 14 7 = 60 or 79 

1818-1825 89 — 48 or 64 

1825-1832 6 4 = 28 or 48 

The stuff in question was at the time not yet produced 
by the power-loom. It permitted, therefore, the 
chance of far more favorable remuneration than the 
production, for example, of printing calico. There 
were even wages as low as 2S. to 3s. weekly." ^ 
The Silesian weavers were even worse off, they were 
actually dying of starvation.^ All this misery was, 
from the point of view of our economic classics, a sit- 
uation for which nature alone was to blame. '^ 

The growth of pauperism, the degradation and de- 
generation of the laboring class in the first half of the 
nineteenth century were not invented by socialist agi- 
tators. The facts were so tangible that the most con- 

^ Schultze-Gaevernitz, The Cotton Trade in England and on 
the Continent (London, 1895), p. 31. 

° J. W. Wolff in Deutsches Burgerbuch filr 1845, PP- 174-202. 

'^ " A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he 
cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just 
demand, and if the society does not want his labor, has no 
claim of right to the smallest portion of food and, in fact, has 
no business to be where he is. At Nature's mighty feast there 
is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will 
quickly execute her own orders." Malthus, An Essay on the 
Principle of Population (2d ed., 1803), p. 531. 



I02 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

servative economists of the time were the most em- 
phatic in their condemnation of existing conditions 
and the first to demand checks and restrictions of the 
capitalist regime. The writings of the leading French 
and German economists and the speeches of Lord Ash- 
ley contain statements as drastic as any to be found 
in the socialist literature. The Communist Manifesto 
contains an attack upon the family — an attack which, 
we believe, Marx himself in later years regretted. 
There we read : " Abolition of the family ! Even the 
most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the 
Communists. . . . The bourgeois clap-trap about 
the family and education, about the hallowed co- 
relation of parent and child, become all the more dis- 
gusting, the more, by the action of modern industry, 
all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, 
and their children transformed into simple articles of 
commerce and instruments of labor." ^ But no less 
respectable and conservative a scholar than Robert 
von Mohl was lamenting as early as 1835, that the 
workingman's wife and children were confiscated by 
the factory system, and that family life was utterly 
destroyed among the industrial proletariat.^ Nor was 

^ Communist Manifesto, pp. 39, 40. 

° " Ueber die Nachteile, welche sowohl den Arbeitern selbst als 
dem Wohlstande und der Sicherheit der gesammten biirgerlichen 
Gesellschaft von dem fabrikmassigen Betriebe der Industrie 
zugehen, und iiber die Notwendigkeit griindlicher Vorbeugungs- 
mittel," in K. H. Rau's Archiv der politischen Oekonomie und 
Poliseiwissenschaft (Heidelberg, 1835), vol. ii, pp. 145, 146, 148, 
151, 156. 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 103 

the accusation wholly unwarranted that the industrial 
system was demoralizing the wives and daughters of 
laboring men. It was rather a common observation 
that the women, who to so large an extent were re- 
placing skilled male laborers, were thrown at each 
industrial crisis on the streets as prostitutes. We 
have, for instance, the following statement from the 
chief constable of Bolton, Mr. Harris : " Unfortunate 
females who, in consequence of the cotton famine, 
were at its commencement thrown out of employment, 
have thereby become outcasts of society; and now 
though trade has revived and work is plentiful they 
continue members of that unfortunate class and are 
likely to continue so. There are also in the borough 
more youthful prostitutes than I have known for the 
last twenty-five years." ^^ 

Yet, while acknowledging the unspeakable misery 
of the working class, our classical political econ- 
omy had no word of solace and no ray of hope 
for the toilers. Even as late as 1874 one of 
the last true-blue representatives of classical politi- 
cal economy, Mr. Cairnes, had the admirable cour- 
age to state frankly and precisely his attitude. The 
possibility of any improvement of the living con- 
ditions of the industrial laborers " is confined within 
narrow barriers which cannot be passed, and the prob- 

^^ Reports of the Inspectors of Factories for the half-year 
ending October 31, 1865. London, 1866, Parliamentary Papers, 
Session i February-io August, 1866, vol. xxiv. 



104 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

lem of their elevation is hopeless. As a body they will 
not rise at all. A few, more energetic or more for- 
tunate than the rest, will from time to time escape, as 
they do now, from the ranks of their fellows to the 
higher walks of industrial life, but the great majority 
will remain substantially where they are. The re- 
muneration of labor as such, skilled or unskilled, can 
never rise much above its present level." ^^ This was 
not so much an expression of a personal opinion as 
a logical deduction from the classical wage-fund doc- 
trine, of which Mr. Cairnes was, if we are not mis- 
taken, the last champion. The tenacity with which 
political economy clung to so crude a doctrine as the 
wage-fund theory, a theory which was so palpably 
below the high mental level which its authors other- 
wise maintained, can be explained only psychologically. 
It was a semi-unconscious device for shirking all re- 
sponsibility for the truly barbarous condition into 
which the British proletariat was sinking; it was an 
ingenious apology for the neglect of all moral obliga- 
tions by state and society, a strong defense of hisses 
faire, putting all the blame for shame and crime and 
dishonor on the Almighty and his immutable laws. 
/ The wage- fund argument was, roughly speaking, 
/ that the general amount of capital is determmed by 
\ society's past exertions, by the accumulated savmgs 
and profits of the past. Out of this sum a certain 

" Cairnes, Some Leading Principles of Political Economy 
Newly Expounded (London, 1874), p. 348. 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 105 

amount is required for plant and material, the amount 
being determined by the technical character of indus- 
try. The free balance is the wage fund, thus a fixed 
and predetermined amount. More than that amount 
the wage-earners cannot possibly receive, less than 
that amount they never obtain. The rate of wages 
therefore depends upon the number of wage-earners. 
Their number is the divisor, the wage fund the div- 
idend. And here comes in the Malthusian doctrine. 
If the number of wage-earners is great, their wages 
are low. Low wages check the increase of population, 
hence wages rise. There is, therefore, no use in blam- 
ing anybody or anything ; one might as well blame the 
four fundamental rules of arithmetic. The question 
of wages is a question of division. If, however, the 
wage-earning population should so decrease and wages 
so rise as to diminish profits, the accumulation of 
capital would thereby automatically be diminished, the 
wage fund would contract, and wages be bound to sink 
again. Neither unionism nor legislation can affect the 
situation — not even if thereby the efficiency of the 
wage-earners be increased and the profits of the cap- 
italist class thus remain undiminished. As Sidney 
and Beatrice Webb have pointed out, this theory " left 
no room for any elevation of the wage-earners even 
if the improvement justified itself by an increase in 
productive capacity. If one section of the wage- 
earners succeeded, by peaceful negotiation or law, in 
so bettering their own conditions of employment as 



io6 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

positively to increase their productive efficiency, this 
would still bring no greater reward to the class as a 
whole. Though the increase in the cost of their labor 
might soon be made up to their employers by its 
greater product, yet this increased drain on the wage 
fund must automatically have depressed the condition 
and so lowered the efficiency of other sections, with 
the result that, though the inequality between the sec- 
tions would have increased, the aggregate efficiency 
of the wage-earners as a whole would not have risen. 
Thus every factory act, which increased the immediate 
cost of woman or child labor, had to be paid for by 
a contemporaneous decrease in somebody's wages; and 
every time a new expense for sanitation or precaution 
against accidents was imposed on the capitalists, some 
of the wage-earners had automatically to suffer a 
diminution of income/' ^^ 

Thus, as the reader can readily observe, any at- 
tempt to alleviate the living and working conditions of 
the laboring class could be resisted on high moral 
grounds: according to the laws of political economy 
the reform would hurt the very class it sought to help ! 
" For a time, indeed, a natural influence may be 
dammed back, but only to act, ultimately, with accumu- 
lated force. In the long run, God's laws will over- 
whelm all human obstructions." ^^ Consequently those 

*^ Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Industrial Democracy (London, 
1902), p. 607. The italics are mine. 
^^ James Stirling, Trade Unionism (1889), p. 27, quoted in 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 107 

who objected to the most ruthless methods of exploit- 
ing child labor were charged with betraying the very 
palladium of British liberties, with " undermining the 
laws of political economy, with assailing God's own 
established order." And thus we see a Harriet Mar- 
tineau lamenting in 1833 over the first faint regula- 
tions of child labor. Shocked as she was by the of- 
ficial disclosures in regard to the subject, she could 
not tolerate any legislative interference, any social con- 
trol ; it was against political economy. But a woman's 
heart is not without mercy, so she hoped that children 
engaged in industry might die ! " The case of those 
wretched factory children seems desperate; the only 
hope seems to be that the race will die out in two or 
three generations; by which time machinery may be 
found to do their work better than their miserable 

Webb's Industrial Democracy, p. 611. Mr. Stirling was after all 
but a commonplace interpreter of " God's laws." The palm in 
this line belongs to the English economist, the Rev. J. Townsend, 
who wrote under the name " The Wellwisher of Mankind " 
against the Poor Law. In his masterpiece, which lived to see 
a second edition — A Dissertation on the Poor Laws (London, 
1817), pp. 39-41, quoted by Marx, Capital, I, pp. 602, 603 — he 
explains to us that the poor are improvident and multiply rapidly 
in order " that there may always be some to fulfil the most 
servile, the most sordid and the most ignoble offices in the 
community. The stock of human happiness is thereby much 
increased, whilst the more delicate are not only relieved from 
drudgery . . . but are left without interruption to pursue those 
caUings which are suited to their various dispositions." The 
Poor Law " tends to destroy the harmony and beauty, the sym- 
metry and order of that system which God and Nature have 
established in the world." 



io8 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

selves." ^* Miss Martineau forgot that machines were 
invented precisely for the purpose of substituting child 
labor for skilled adult labor. 

But Marx remembered it; he knew Ure's Philosophy 
of Manufactures by heart. ^^ And yet Marx and En- 
gels did not escape the dogmatic fascination of the 
" economic law." It is this circumstance which 
stamped Marx as a classical economist. In the fifties 
Marx, and Engels also, regarded any attempt to regu- 
late economic conditions by the law of the land as 
fruitless meddling, reactionary in its effect. We find 
them anathematizing the ten-hour law in language 
worthy of Nassau Senior. " The whole social devel- 
opment of England depends upon the development and 
progress of its industry. All institutions, which inter- 
fere with its progress, which try to regulate and 
control it . . . are reactionary and untenable." ^® 
From this classical doctrine Marx and Engels, how- 
ever, drew the conclusion that, since reforms cannot 
mend the situation, the economic development is 
bound to lead to a revolution. '' And so the only 
solution of the ten-hour problem, as of all problems 

^* Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, by Maria W. Chap- 
man (London, 1877), vol. iii, p. 87. Quoted in Webb, op. cit., 
p. 608. 

^''"The effect of substituting the self-acting mule for the 
common mule is to discharge the greater part of men spinners 
and to retain adolescents and children." Ure, Philosophy of 
Manufactures (London, 1835), p. 2Z- 

^^ In Marx's Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Heft 4 (London, 1850), 
P- 13- 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 109 

arising from the antagonism of capital and labor, is 
the proletarian revolution." ^^ 

There are two main principles of government, 
and they are mutually exclusive : the one of so- 
cial control and state intervention; the other of 
consistent laissez faire, the state guaranteeing prop- 
erty and free contract and then limiting its functions 
to those of a policeman and night-watchman. It is 
obvious that economic tendencies can be watched, 
checked and modified from the point of view of the 
first principle, but from the other point of view these 
tendencies are manifestations of immanent and sov- 
ereign laws, independent of our desires and our ac- 
tions. Classical political economy represented at the 
same time advocacy of the laissez faire principle and a 
theoretical explanation of the phenomena which arise 
under it. 

In his Capital Marx abandoned his old view of the 
ten-hour bill and became an inconsistent advocate of 
social control, but he remained a typical classical free- 
trader in his theory. He took it for granted that the 
capitalist mode of production is based on non-inter- 
ference and free trade, and, with exceptional acumen, 
he worked out its laws and tendencies, which pointed 
to a general cataclysm of capitalist society and to a 
social revolution. Yet Marx himself witnessed the 

^'' Ihid., p. 16. See also Aus dent literarischen Nachlass von 
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, etc., vol. iii (Stuttgart, 1902), p. 
395- 



/ 



no MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

passing of the hisses faire stage of English capitalism 
and the reintroduction of social control — the ten-hour 
bill, the factory acts, etc. He appreciated their im- 
portance. There is abundant proof that he realized 
that he was witnessing the victory of a new principle. 
But it was too late ; his theory was made up and was 
fixed in his mind. As a theory, it was profound, but 
it was unrelated to the transformation which was 
going on before his eyes. Lass^lle^s prediction that 
Marx would be a combination of a Hegel turned 



economist and a Ricardo turned socialist ^^ was com- 
pletely verified. Marx did develop and apply the eco- 
nomic principles of Ricardo, and the change of 
tableaus in Hegel's historical process he expected from 
the self-destruction of capitalism. He was on the 
lookout for a death certificate, and did not notice that 
the factory acts and social control signified either a 
new lease of life for capitalism or the new tableau he 
was looking for, the dawn of a new era. 

Now let us see how Marx came to this doctrine of 
increasing misery as a law of capitalist society. The 
iron law of wages, as we have already seen, did not 
account for the actual steady sinking of wages. Nor 
was the Malthusian side of the iron-law doctrine ac- 
ceptable to Marx. Neither of these theories made 
any such impression upon him as that which he re- 
ceived from Andrew Ure's discussion of the purport 

^^ Brief e von Ferdinand Lassalle an Karl Marx (Stuttgart, 
1902), p. 30. The letter cited is dated May 12, 1851. 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY iii 

and effect of machinery : " The effect of improvements 
in machinery not merely in superseding the necessity 
for the employment of the same quality of adult labor 
as before, in order to produce a given result, but in 
substituting one description of human labor for an- 
other, the less skilled for the more skilled, juvenile for 
adult, female for male, causes a fresh disturbance in 
the rate of wages." ^^ Upon these facts, which were 
matters of common observation, Marx built his theory 
of wages and population. From these data it fol- 
lowed that in industrial society a surplus population, 
pauperism of the unemployed, and low wages of the 
employed are due to technical improvements. While 
Malthus's law may apply to plants or animals, it is 
not written for modern industrial life, since an entirely 
new element comes in, that of industrial technique, and 
this element is the decisive one. In fact, without a 
large surplus population of operatives, without an in- 
dustrial reserve army, capitalist industry could not 
exist, since it could not adjust itself to the fluctuations 
which are essential to an unorganized competitive 
mode of production. Without a reserve army on call, 
the times of prosperity could not be utilized, and the 
increased demand could not be supplied for lack of 
factory hands. This reserve army is created and 
maintained by the introduction of new machinery or 
by technical improvement of the old. It acts as a 
dead weight of pauperism upon the active industrial 
^^Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures (London, 1835), p. 321. 



112 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

army. Wages are depressed and become insufficient 
for the physical maintenance of the laborers' families. 
The improved machinery permits the employment of 
women and children, the insufficient wages of the men 
compel it. Thus the proletarian family is destroyed; 
it becomes a group of factory hands. The large 
amount of " constant " capital, i.e., capital invested in 
the plant, suggests its longer and intenser utilization. 
As a result comes the prolongation of the working 
day. " When a laborer," says a cotton manufacturer 
quoted by Nassau Senior, " lays down his spade, he 
renders useless a capital worth eightpence. When one 
of our people leaves the mill he renders useless a 
capital that has cost £100,000." ^^ Hence the de- 
mand for longer hours, a demand which the laborer 
cannot resist because of the competition of the indus- 
trial reserve. Machinery, as Ure explained, turns the 
flanks of the laboring army and compels it to " sur- 
render at discretion " ; and every bit of machinery 
" confirms the great doctrine already propounded, that 
when capital enlists science into her service the re- 
fractory hand of labor will always be taught 
docility." '^ 

If Ure explained the origin of an industrial reserve 
army. Professor Merivale, whose writings Marx 
studied, suggested the industrial reserve army as an 
indispensable condition for modern industry. If as a 

-*• Senior, Letters on the Factory Acts (London, 1837), pp. 

13, 14- 
^^ Ure, op. cit., pp. 368-370 et passim. 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 113 

result of bad times the unemployed should emigrate 
to some other country, reasoned Merivale, then with 
the return of prosperity there will not be a sufficient 
supply for the increased demand for labor. The fac- 
tory hands may get better wages; they may breed, 
according to Malthus, more freely; but still, he con- 
tinues, '' however rapid reproduction may be, it takes, 
at all events, the space of a generation to replace the 
loss of adult labor. Now, the profits of our manu- 
facturers depend mainly on the power of making use 
of the prosperous moment when demand is brisk, and 
thus compensating themselves for the interval during 
which it is slack. This power is secured to them only 
by the command of machinery and of manual labor. 
They must have hands ready for them, they must be 
able to increase the activity of their operations when 
required, and to slacken it again, according to the state 
of the market." ^^ This was of course Marx's point 
of view. The economic implications of commercial 
depressions Marx could not overlook. On the com- 
mercial crisis Marx rested his hope of the final cata- 
clysm of capitalist society. The analysis of industrial 
crises was perhaps the chief contribution of Marx's 
French predecessors, Fourier and Sismondi,^^ which 
Marx, as usual, gladly acknowledged.^* 

^^ H. Merivale, Lectures on Colonisation and Colonies (1841), 
vol. i, p. 146. 

^' Ch. Andler, Le Manifeste Communiste, vol. ii, Introduction 
historique et commentaire (Paris, 1901), pp. 99-102. 

'* Menger and some other writers have wasted a good deal 



114 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

One can therefore easily imagine how little use 
Karl Marx had from this point of view for the wage- 
fund apologists, whose sentiments may be summed 
up in Harriet Martineau's advice to the laboring 
class : " We manufacturers do what we can, whilst we 
are increasing that capital on which you must subsist, 
and you must do the rest by accommodating your 
numbers to the means of subsistence!"^^ Marx's 
scorn for Malthusianism and for the wage-fund the- 
ories was, however, intellectual rather than moral. He 
had, as we have seen, as little hope for the rise of 
the laboring class as any of his contemporaries. But 
he could not assume that low wages are due to over- 
population, that after the population has been deci- 
mated wages rise, that with the rise of wages the 
population increases and so on. '' A beautiful mode 
of motion this for developed capitalist production ! " 
he exclaims. '' Before, in consequence of the rise of 



of time in trying to demonstrate the sources from which Marx 
borrowed his system. In literary matters Marx was extremely 
punctilious. His erudition was colossal, and wherever he was 
conscious of borrowing an idea he invariably acknowledged it. 
Apart from such acknowledged borrowings he was unconsciously 
influenced, without doubt, by many writers and by many political 
and social occurrences, and from the psychological and the his- 
torical points of view it is interesting to trace these influences; 
but it is folly to search for a predecessor from whom Marx 
borrows his system. There is not a single separate idea in the 
system of Marx which was not formulated or suggested by 
previous writers, but the combination of these ideas in one 
colossal structure is Marx's own achievement. 

^^ Harriet Martineau, The Manchester Strike (1842), p. loi. 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 115 

wages, any positive increase of the population really 
fit for work could occur, the time would have been 
passed, again and again, during which the industrial 
campaign must have been carried through, the battle 
fought and won." ^^ 

On the other hand the wage-fund theory was not 
without influence upon Marx, especially since in the 
ultimate result — the assumed impossibility of any rise 
of the working class — Marx was entirely in accord 
with his contemporaries and predecessors. Thus, in 
somewhat different words, Marx re-states the classical 
theory, emphasizing the expansion and contraction not 
of population but of production : " Accumulation X 
slackens in consequence of the rise of the price of 
labor, because the stimulus of gain is blunted. The 
rate of accumulation lessens; but with its lessening the 
primary cause of that lessening vanishes, i.e., the dis- 
proportion between capital and exploitable labor- 
power. The mechanism of the process of capitalist 
production removes the very obstacle that it tem- 
porarily creates." ^^ In other words, since in capital- 
istic society the laborer exists for the increase of ex- 
isting values and not vice versa, every rise in wages 
which will endanger the continual expansion of capital 
is excluded.^^ With the accumulation of capital the 
proportion of constant to variable capital changes, i.e., 

^® Marx, Capital, vol. i, p. 652. 
" lUd., p. 6z3. 
^^ Ibid., p. 634. 



ii6 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

the amount of capital invested in plant and machinery 
in relation to the amount spent on wages is not as 
it was originally — not, let us say, i : i, but 2: i, 3: 1, 
4:1, 6:1, 8:1, etc. Since the demand for labor is 
determined not by the amount of capital as a whole, 
but by its " variable " constituent alone, i.e., by the 
amount spent on wages, the demand for labor falls 
progressively with the increase of the total capital, the 
largest part of which is now being transformed into 
means of production, i.e., machinery, etc."^ Machinery 
and other improved means of production, as we have 
seen, create a surplus population. '' The laboring pop- 
ulation therefore produces, along with the accumulation 
of capital produced by it, the means by which itself 
is made relatively superfluous, is turned into a relative 
surplus population; and it does this to an always in- 
creasing extent. This is a law of population peculiar 
to the capitalist mode of production." ^^ 

But the surplus population, the industrial reserve 
army, as we have seen, is itself a lever of capitalistic 
accumulation, in fact a condition of existence of the 
capitalist mode of production. The course character- 
istic of modern industry — let us say a decennial cycle 
of average activity, production at high pressure, crisis 
and stagnation — depends upon the existence of an in- 
dustrial army, the greater or lesser absorption of 
which at any time corresponds to the momentary de- 
gree of productive activity. In periods of stagnation, 

="* Ibid., p. 643. '" Ibid., p. 645. 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 117 

the active labor army is weighed down by the indus- 
trial reserve army. In times of prosperity the reserve 
army still holds the pretensions of labor in check. It 
is thus the pivot upon which the law of demand and 
supply of labor works. Pauperism, pauperism on an 
ever-increasing scale, is therefore a necessary part of 
the system; it enters into the faux frais of capitalistic 
production. And Marx formulates his theory of in- 
creasing misery as follows : 

" The folly is now patent of the economic wisdom 
that preaches to the laborers the accommodation of 
their number to the requirements of capital. The 
mechanism of capitalist production and accumulation 
constantly affects this adjustment. The first word of 
this adaptation is the creation of a relative surplus 
population, or industrial reserve army. Its last word 
is the misery of constantly extending strata of the 
active army of labor, and the dead weight of pau- 
perism. 

" The law by which a constantly increasing quantity 
of means of production, thanks to the advance in the 
productiveness of social labor, may be set in move- 
ment by a progressively diminishing expenditure of hu- 
man power, this law, in a capitalist society, where the 
laborer does not employ the means of production but 
the means of production employ the laborer, undergoes 
a complete inversion and is expressed thus : the higher 
the productiveness of labor, the greater is the pressure 
of the laborers on the means of employment, the more 



ii8 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

precarious, therefore, becomes their condition of exist- 
ence, viz., the sale of their own labor power for the 
increasing of another's wealth, or for the self-expan- 
sion of capital. The fact that the means of produc- 
tion and the productiveness of labor increase more 
rapidly than the productive population, expresses 
itself, therefore, capitalistically in the inverse form, 
that the laboring population always increases more 
rapidly than the conditions under which capital can 
employ this increase for its own self-expansion. . . . 
Within the capitalist system all methods for raising 
the social productiveness of labor are brought about 
at the cost of the individual laborer; all means for 
development of production transform themselves into 
means of domination over and exploitation of the pro- 
ducers; they mutilate the laborer into a fragment of 
a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage to a 
machine, destroy every charm in his work and turn it 
into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intel- 
lectual potentialities of the labor process in the same 
proportion as science is incorporated in it as an inde- 
pendent power ; they distort the conditions under which 
he works, subject him during his labor process to a 
despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they 
transform his lifetime into working time, and drag 
his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut 
of Capital. But all methods for the production of 
surplus value are at the same time methods of accumu- 
lation; and every extension of accumulation becomes 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 119 

again a means for the development of these methods. 
It follows therefore that in proportion as capital ac- 
cumulates, the lot of the laborer, be his payment high 
or low, must grow worse. The law, finally, that al- 
ways equilibrates the relative surplus population or 
industrial reserve army to the extent and energy of 
accumulation, this law rivets the laborer to capital 
more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prome- 
theus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of 
misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. 
Accumulation of wealth at one pole is therefore at\ 
the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, / 
slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at' 
the opposite pole." ^^ 

This is Marx's theory of increasing misery. At the 
end of the first volume of his Capital, summing up and 
giving an account of the general historical tendencies 
of accumulation, he clearly indicates whither the in- 
creasing misery of the working class is bound to lead. 
Along with the concentration of industry and central- 
ization of capital '' grows the mass of misery, oppres- 
sion, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with it 
too grows the revolt of the working class, a class al- 
ways increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, 
organized by the very mechanism of the process of 
capitalist production itself." ^^ 

Such is the doctrine, a doctrine embracing a theory 
of population and a law of wages, and formulating 

'^ Marx, Capital, vol. i, pp. 660, 661. '"Ibid., p. 789. 



I20 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

a tendency which leads inevitably and necessarily to 
a social revolution and socialism. It is undoubtedly 
an ingenious doctrine; its critique of Malthusianism 
and of wage-fund theories is as a whole well taken; 
yet it was destined to share the fate of preceding eco- 
nomic doctrines. Life in its development has betrayed 
them and left them behind. And their value is now 
but that of historical monuments. 

It has already been pointed out that the Marxian 
theory which we are now discussing is framed on the 
presupposition of consistent individualism, non-re- 

/sistance on the part of the laboring class until no 
alternative to revolution is left, non-interference on 
the part of the state, with economic life reduced to a 
mechanical entity, till the very mechanism of economic 

Vlife makes the existent state impossible. Were it not 
for the circumstance that Marx witnessed the intro- 
duction of the factory acts and the resumption of 
social control on the part of the state, his theory would 
have been open to criticism only as defective in its 
psychology. Considering that he lived to see these 
changes, his theory is open to sharper criticism: it 
dealt with a fictitious society, and the result was a 
fictitious doctrine, based on the facts as they had 
been, but unrelated to the facts as they were, and 
therefore without claim to reality and truth. 

It is indeed evident that Marx saw how trade 
unionism alone might undermine and render worthless 
his wage law and his whole theory of increasing 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 121 

misery. He wrote : " As soon, therefore, as the la- 
borers learn the secret, how it comes to pass that in 
the same measure as they work more, as they produce 
more wealth for others, and as the productive power 
of their labor increases, so in the same measure even 
their function as a means of the self-expansion of 
capital becomes more and more precarious for them; 
as soon as they discover that the degree of intensity of 
competition among themselves depends wholly on the 
pressure of relative surplus population; as soon as by 
trades unions, etc., they try to organize a regular co- 
operation between employed and unemployed in order 
to destroy or to weaken the ruinous effects of this 
natural law of capitalistic production on their class, 
so soon capital and its sycophant, political economy, 
cry out at the infringement of the ' eternal ' and, so 
to say, ' sacred ' law of supply and demand. Every 
combination of employed and unemployed disturbs the 
* harmonious ' action of this law." ^^ So Marx ac- 
knowledged that trade unionism might weaken or 
even destroy the " natural law " of wages. And that 
unionism has done it is beyond question. Organized 
labor has succeeded in steadily improving its living 
conditions. In 1892, in his preface to the second edi- 
tion of his book on the working class in England, 
Frederick Engels had to acknowledge it and sadly to 
admit the fact that, with the improved conditions, the 
revolutionary spirit of the Chartist epoch had sub- 

" Marx, Capital, vol. i, p. 655. The italics are mine. 



122 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

sided. He wrote : " The engineers, the carpenters, 
joiners and bricklayers are each of them a power, to 
that extent that, as in the case of the bricklayers and 
bricklayers' laborers, they can even successfully resist 
the introduction of machinery. That their condition 
has remarkably improved since 1848 there can he no 
doubt J and the best proof of this is the fact that for 
more than fifteen years not only have their employers 
been with them, hut they with their employers, upon 
exceedingly good terms. They form an aristocracy 
among the working class; they have succeeded in en- 
forcing for themselves a relatively comfortable posi- 
tion and they accept it as final. They are the model 
workingmen of Messrs. Leone Levi and Giffen, and 
they are very nice people indeed nowadays to deal 
with, for any sensible capitalist in particular and for 
the whole capitalist class in general." ^* The " nat- 
ural law " of capitalist production had failed to work. 
Not only was misery not on the increase, but the con- 
ditions of the so-called aristocracy of labor, as Engels 
himself acknowledged, had remarkably improved. 

There is also an official ex cathedra statement of 
Marx in regard to this matter, a statement which 
opens up an extremely interesting psychological ques- 
tion. Marx published the first volume of his Capital 
in 1867. In it he developed his theory of increasing 
misery. Yet in 1864, while he was elaborating that 

°* Fr. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in Eng^ 
land in 1844 (London, 1892), p. xv. The italics are mine. 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 123 

volume, he openly abandoned this theory. In his 
book, it must be remembered, this theory is a central 
doctrine. Not only does it embody his theory of popu- 
lation and his wage law, but upon it is based his pro- 
gressively intensified class-struggle doctrine; and, fur- 
thermore, it is a vital part of his theory of the inevita- 
ble catclysm of capitalistic society. The statement 
just made, that he abandoned the increasing misery 
theory in 1864, is based on what he said in his inaug- 
ural address before the International Workingmen's 
Association in that year : " After a thirty years' war 
conducted with wonderful endurance, the English 
working class succeeded in utilizing a temporary clash 
between the landed aristocracy and the moneyed aris- 
tocracy, and the ten-hour bill was put through. 
Everybody acknowledges now its significant physical, 
moral and intellectual advantages for the working 
class, which are chronologically now recorded in the 
semi-annual reports of the factory inspectors. The 
majority of the continental governments feel them- 
selves also obliged to introduce the English factory 
acts with greater or less diminishing, and the 
British Parliament is compelled to enlarge from 
year to year the sphere of influence of the factory 
acts. The wonderful results of this labor measure 
were of more than mere practical significance. The 
notorious mouthpieces of the British bourgeoisie, 
scholars like Dr. Ure, Professor Senior and wiseacres 
of the same type, prophesied and proved to their own 



124 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

heart's satisfaction that any legal limitation of the 
working day would chime the death hour of British 
industry — an industry which like a vampire could 
thrive only on blood, children's blood above all. The 
struggle for the legal limitation of the working day 
was the more bitter, because it was not merely a check 
upon individual greed, but also a direct intervention 
in the great battle waged between the blind law of 
supply and demand — the political economy of the 
bourgeois — and the principle of social regulation of 
production, which is the quintessence of the political 
economy of the laboring class. And therefore the ten- 
hour bill was not only a great practical success, it was 
the victory of a principle. In the bright sunlight of 
day the bourgeois political economy was here van- 
quished for the first time by the political economy of 
the working class." ^^ Thus Marx himself threw over- 
board his theory of increasing misery. The victory of 
the new principle meant the defeat of the principle 
upon which the whole Marxian theory rests, the crum- 
bling of his whole economic system, of all his eco- 
nomic proofs and evidences of the inevitable dies irae, 
of the cataclysm of our whole economic organization. 
The foundation upon which Marx's entire work was 
built, the inevitable laissez faire, Marx himself ac- 

*^ Inaugural Address delivered by Marx, September 28, 1864, 
in St. Martin's Hall. Der Vorbote, politische und sozialokono- 
mische Zeitschrift, Centralorgan der Sektionsgruppe deutscher 
Sprache der Internationalen Arbeiterassociation, redigirt von 
JoH. Phil. Becker (Genf. 1866), pp. 38-39- 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 125 

knowledged to have been washed away even before his 
work was ready for print, before he finished its archi- 
tectural details. 

Anybody who studies the first volume of Capital can 
see there the unconscious conflict of the two principles, 
— on one hand the elaboration of a purely economico- 
mechanic system, not as a theoretical possibility but 
as an actual tangible reality predestined to run itself 
to ruin in its own course; and on the other hand the 
acknowledgment of the salutary and modifying effects 
of social control, which determines the character of 
the economic phenomena. 

If the Marxian theory were a " static state " theory, 
any tendency indicating the direct opposite of what 
the theory claims could be classed by the Marxists as 
one of those " slight " deviations of a temporary char- 
acter due perhaps to man-made law, which is after all 
of little concern to truth everlasting. But Marx's just 
claim to fame rests precisely on his refusal to traf^c 
in eternal verities. His economic laws are laws of 
capitalist production only. Every economic epoch has 
its own laws, but they are laws of development, laws 
actually governing the economic tendencies. If, there- 
fore, the actual facts flatly contradict the theory, as 
they do, there remains but the alternative either to 
deny the facts or to repudiate the theory. 

Both alternatives have found their champions. 
Some imaginative and enterprising socialists, not 
weighed down with too much learning, deny the facts 



126 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

of the case; others claim that the doctrine of increasing 
misery is but a minor and non-essential point, which 
could and should be dropped as immaterial and irrele- 
vant to the Marxian theory and to scientific socialism. 
So for instance Franz Mehring, a Marxist, justly held 
in high esteem by the socialists of his country on ac- 
count of his learned historical works, makes the curi- 
ous statement that the theory of increasing misery is 
but a relic inherited by Marx from the bourgeois po- 
litical economy, which has lost long ago what little 
sense and justification it might once have had and 
which has nothing in common with orthodox Marx- 
ism. ^^ Schonlank, a German socialist of marked abil- 
ity, frankly admits that the theory of increasing 
misery is untenable." The same is the attitude of 



^* " How long the party will continue to find satisfaction in 
these discussions we do not know, but even were it to do so for 
as many years in the future as it already has in the past, not 
a particle of use would arise from it. And for the simple reason 
that the theory of increasing misery long since lost whatever 
import and acceptance it may have had in the past. A product 
of bourgeois political economy when that was still unbiassed, it 
has nothing to do with ' orthodox Marxism.' " Mehring, " His- 
torisches zur Verelendungstheorie," Neue Zeit, Jahrgang XX 
(Stuttgart, 1902), vol. i, pp. 164, 165. 

^^ " The theory of misery in the absolute sense which long 
was current in our party, and the theory of constantly increasing 
misery which still finds expression in the first part of the Erfurt 
program, are no longer tenable ! " Leipsiger V olkszeitung , 1897, 
quoted in the " Bernstein-Debatte " in Hanover. Protokoll uber 
die Verhandlungen des Parteitages der sosialdemokraiischen 
Partei Deutschlands, abgehalten zu Hannover, Oktober 9-14, 
1899, PP- ^Z7y 138. 



THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 127 

David, who urges his comrades to acknowledge the 
mistake.^^ 

And yet the true-blue Marxists are unwilling to 
drop this theory. They realize that in dropping it 
they are dropping Marxism, but they do not realize 
that in interpreting it away they are interpreting Marx- 
ism away. The whole construction of Marx's Capitah 
leads up to the doctrine of increasing misery. In 
rejecting this theory, one rejects also Marx's theory 
of population, his theory of wages, his theory of ac- 
cumulation of capital. And if what is left be Marx- 
ism, it is Marxism with Marx left out. Not only is 
his theory shattered, but what rational foundation is 
there left for his vision and hope, his goal and in- 
spiration — the breakdown of capitalism and the social 
revolution? These conceptions of Marx as well as his 
idea of the general crisis are based upon the pro- 
gressively increasing misery of the working class. 




39 



^® "Let us not play at hide-and-seek, but let us quietly explain : 
the position of the program in regard to increasing misery is a 
mistake." Ibid., p. 138. 

^^ So Peter Struve points out "that the theory of a cataclysm 
as a theory of a general crisis necessarily leads back to the 
doctrine of increasing misery." Peter von Struve^ " Die 
Marx'sche Theorie der Sozialen Entwicklung," Braun's Archiv 
fur soziale Gesetzgehung und Statistik, vol. xiv, 1899, p. 695. 



CHAPTER VII 

DATA RELATING TO THE STATUS OF THE 
WAGE-EARNER 

Since the Marxian system cannot without wrecking 
its theory disavow the doctrine of increasing misery 
of wage-earners, it devolves upon us to test this doc- 
trine by the actual facts of economic life, i.e., by wage 
statistics. Relatively easy as it is to obtain figures of 
wages for long periods, their scientific utilization pre- 
sents considerable difficulties. The data have invaria- 
bly been gathered and controlled by different methods; 
the money wage of the time and the purchasing power 
of the wage varied greatly. The task is therefore not 
a grateful one, and no historical statements of wages 
based upon miscellaneous statistics can lay claim to 
mathematical exactness. And yet in spite of all the 
inevitable inaccuracies, these statistical data suffice to 
establish the general tendencies beyond a shadow of 
reasonable doubt. 

A valuable supplement to the ordinary statistics of 
workingmen's earnings are the budgets of the wage- 
earner's expenditures. Although budget literature is 
now being traced back to Sir William Petty and his 
Political Arithmetic, for our purposes only material 

128 



STATUS OF THE WAGE-EARNER 129 

of much later date is of interest. We may start with 
a contemporary of the Communist Manifesto — Dr. 
Alexander v. Lengerke's Ldndliche Arbeiterfrage,^ 
which is a very important volume. The itemized ex- 
penditures are estimates, but they are carefully and 
minutely considered estimates submitted at the request 
of the Prussian government by 185 local agricultural 
societies, and they all relate to the probable ex- 
penditures of peasant families consisting of five 
members. 

This investigation embraces agricultural laborers 
and peasants who supplement their income from farm- 
ing by outside agricultural labor. One hundred and 
fifteen thalers was the average income of such families 
throughout Prussia in 1848; ^ and on an average not 
less than 96 per cent of their budget went for the satis- 
faction of the elementary physical wants: food, shel- 
ter, clothing, fuel and fodder. The remaining 4 per 
cent was spent on " Abgaben an Staat, Kirche, Schule." 
Since taxes may well be estimated at about 3 per cent, 
it left but I per cent for non-physical wants. ^ 

^ Die ldndliche Arheiterfrage. Beantwortet durch die hei dem 
koniglichen landes-0 ekonomie-C ollegium aus alien Gegenden der 
preussischen Monarchie eingegangenen Berichte landmirtschaft- 
licher Vereine Uher die materiellen Zustdnde der arbeitenden 
Classen auf dem platten Lande. Berlin. Im Bureau des konigl. 
Ministeriums fiir landwirtschaftliche Angelegenheiten 1849. The 
volume is rare, but there is a copy in the Library of Congress. 

'^ Ibid., p. 13. 

* See also on the subject, Ernst Engels, Die Lebenskosten 
Belgischer Arbeiter-Familien, Dresden, 1905, p. 19. 



I30 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

An enquete on similar lines covering the whole of 
Germany was undertaken in 1872. The results were 
published by Professor von der Goltz in 1875,* ^^^ 
show an extraordinary material improvement of the 
living conditions of the agricultural laborers. The ex- 
penditures of a family of five were in Prussia Mk. 
632.7 instead of Mk. 315.30 as in 1848, and through- 
out Germany the average expenditure amounted to 
Mk. 717.^ 

The great material advance of the agricultural la- 

* Die Lage der Idndlichen Arheiter im Deutschen Reich. Unter 
Mitwirkung von Prof. Richter, v. Langsdorff, erstattet von Dr. 
Th. Frh. von der Goltz, Professor an der Universitat Konigsberg, 
Berlin, 1875. (A copy in the Cornell University Library.) 

^ Engels, op. cit., p. 19. " With regard to intellectual culture 
progress may be noted more frequently than with regard to 
morals. . . . 

" With regard to the material situation. Here an almost gen- 
eral improvement in the material condition of the agricultural 
laborers is proved, but at the same time it is evident that they 
have not become more economical." . . . 

Dr. V. d. Goltz goes on to show that within the last 30 years 
prices increased as follows: rye, 25 per cent, potatoes 31 per 
cent, butter 48 per cent and meat 53 per cent ; but wages increased 
in most provinces in the neighborhood of 100 per cent while 
many articles of consumption (especially " Colonialwaaren ") de- 
creased in price. He also reminds us of the fact that the products 
which increased in price are chiefly produced by the agricul- 
tural laborers themselves on their plots of land, or they receive 
it as a " Naturaldeputat " from their employer. Professor von 
der Goltz therefore comes to the conclusion : " After what has 
been said we are obliged to emphasize the fact that the statement 
which was made with such unanimity in the committee in regard 
to the actual improvement in the material condition of the agri- 
cultural laborer was thoroughly warranted." Th. von der Goltz, 
loc. cit., pp. 496, 497, 498. 



STATUS OF THE WAGE-EARNER 131 

borer and the rise in his standard of Hving were re- 
ported in every part of the German Empire. 

And yet, as we have previously pointed out, the 
Communist Manifesto must not be regarded as a 
rhetorical exercise of a mere demagogue. In the midst 
of its fiery revolutionary eloquence the Manifesto 
shows more regard for facts than many a learned 
work of its time. The Manifesto is in truth but a 
reflection of the effects of early industrialism; it was 
written under the fresh impression of hunger riots 
of the Silesian weavers, which Heine and Hauptmann 
have immortalized.*^ It is therefore especially for- 
tunate that one of the most careful budget studies 
should cover the economic status of the Silesian textile 
workers during the period of 1865- 1874. This study 
was made by Karl Schwedler,^ the manager of a local 
cooperative society (Consumverein). All the prices 
were taken from the actual account books, the sums 
spent minutely itemized, the increase in rent not over- 
looked : in short the study is exceptionally trustworthy. 
Here are the results : Schwedler's tables show that in 



® Heine's famous poem, " Die Weber," begins with these lines : 
'• Im diistren Auge keine Thrane, Sie sitzen am Webstuhl und 
fletschen die Zahne: Deutschland, wir weben dein Leichentuch, 
Wir weben hinein den dreifachen Fluch, Wir weben, wir weben ! " 
(" No tears in their sad eyes, they sit at the loom and grimly 
smile; Germany, we weave your shroud, into it we weave a 
threefold curse, we weave, we weave! ") 

'' Karl Schwedler, " Arbeitslohne in der Schlesischen Textil- 
Industrie und Unterhaltsbedarf in den letzten 10 Jahren." In the 
Arheiterfreund, vol. xii, Berlin, 1875, pp. 149 ff. , 



132 



MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 



the ten years prices advanced 35 per cent. Wages on 
the other hand advanced, for men, 60 per cent ; women, 
29 per cent ; girls, 50 per cent ; boys, 50 per cent.^ 

What percentage of these increasing wages forms a 
surplus over the merely physical necessities of life and 
the allowance for its fuller development? An inter- 
esting table, which answers this question, is to be 
found in a recent curious Russian book by S. Solncev.^ 
Solncev used the Berlin workingmen's budgets col- 
lected in 1879, 1896 and 1900 by Berlin statisticians. 



1. Rent 

2. Furniture 

3. Fuel 

4- Light 

5. Clothing, wash, etc. 

6. Food 

7. Drinks and food in 

restaurants, etc.. . 

8. Care of health, etc.. 



A. Expenditures of c 

physical nature . . 

B. Expenditures non 

physical 



Total 



Expenditures per Person in a Family 



In Marks 



1879 



52.0 
6.8 

19.7 
5-0 

397 
156.7 

17.0 
7.4 



304.3 
16.1 



320.4 



60.6 

? 

16.3 
4.2 

33-3 
171-9 

20.5 
5-9 



322.7 
38.2 



360.9 



1900 



76.5 
? 

18.9 

5-7 

49-7 

203.2 

9.5 

4.8 



368.3 
81.3 



449.6 



Per Cent to all 
Expenditures 



1879 



16.3 

2.2 

6.0 

1.6 

12.4 

48.9 

5.3 
2.3 



950 
5.0 



100. 



1896 



17.3 

? 

4-7 

1.2 

1 0.0 

48.1 

5.8 
2.0 



89.4 
10.6 



100. 



1900 



17.01 

? 

4.18 

1.25 
11.06 
45.01 

2.16 
1.03 



81.73 
18.27 



100. 



® Karl Schwedler, loc. cit., p. 153. 
^ S. Solncev, Rabachie budgeti v svyasi s teoriey 
1907, p. 69. 



obednenia' 



STATUS OF THE WAGE-EARNER 133 

Non-physical expenditures, which practically did not 
exist in agricultural districts in 1848, have gradually 
risen from 5 per cent in 1879 to 18 per cent in 1900 
in family households. In 1903 the non-physical ex- 
penditures of a Berlin workingman's family, number- 
ing 4 persons, were already fluctuating from 18 to 
25 per cent of the total expenditures, and those of a 
bachelor averaged as high as 28 per cent/*^ 

The admirable work of Professor Ashley on The 
Progress of the German Working Classes will give us 
the reason for such an extraordinary change. Every 
side of Germany's economic life is discussed by Mr. 
Ashley, and they all testify to the gradual but steady 
improvement of the workingmen. In Krupp's works, 
for instance, the average wage has risen, between 
1871-1900, 57 per cent, while, owing to a special hous- 
ing policy, rent actually decreased. During the same 
period the price of bacon increased but 2 per cent, that 
of beef II per cent, veal 21 per cent, that of potatoes 
decreased 31 per cent, that of bread decreased 2y per 
cent.^^ The annual earnings in the Hamburg ship- 
building yards show the following percentage of in- 
crease : 

1880-1890 1890-1899 1880-1899 

Shipbuilders 7.2 13.5 21.7 

Machinists 19.4 13.3 35.3 

Helpers 30.4 14.5 49.3 

Boilermakers 28.00 13.0 44.7 

*" SOLNCEV, op. cit., p. 38. 

^^ W. J. Ashley, The Progress of the German Working Classes 
in the Last Quarter of a Century. 1904, p. 91. 



134 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

And this general rise took place in spite of the intro- 
duction of the ten-hour day in the middle of the 
eighties/^ The approximate average wage of the coal 
heavers in Westphalia v^as in 

1865 Mk. 600-700 

1874 900-1,000 

1886-1888 800-900 

1890 1,100-1,200 

1898-1899 1,300-1,500 ^' 

The deposits in savings banks in Saxony increased 
from Mk. 114.65 per head of the population in 1880 
to Mk. 222.0^ in 1900.^* In Prussia the number of 
savings bank depositors in 1875 was 2,209,101, the 
amount deposited 1,112 millions; in 1898, 8,049,599 
depositors and the amount deposited 5,287 millions.^'* 
The consumption of all ordinary articles of food in- 
creased greatly during the same period throughout 
Germany. The consumption of v^heat rose from 51.6 
kilos per head in 1879-84 to 74.4 kilos in 1895-96, 
that of sugar from 6.4 kilos in 1871-81 to 10.7 kilos 
in 1891-96, that of rice from 1.55 kilos in 1871-75 to 
2.49 kilos in 1891-95, of petroleum 1.87 kilos in 
1886-90 to 16.14 kilos in 1896.^® The consumption of 
meat increased in Prussia from 18 kilos per head in 
1867 to 37 kilos in 1897; in Saxony the consumption 
of beef and pork increased from 22.2 kilos in i860 

^'^ Ibid., p. 93. ^* Ibid., p. 116. 

'^ Ibid., p. 95. " Ibid., p. 117. 

^^ Ibid., pp. 120-122. 



STATUS OF THE WAGE-EARNER 135 

to 43.1 kilos in 1900. The death rate decreased from 
29.0 per 1,000 in 1870 to 20.6 in 1902/^ the death rate 
in Berlin from 31.89 in 1861-70 to 17.38 in 1903; the 
number of suicides decreased from 31 per 100,000 in 
1871-81 to 24.5 in 1897-1901;^® the over-sea emigra- 
tion decreased from 3.22 per cent of the population in 
1884 to 0.40 per cent in 1900. The number of over- 
crowded dwellings in Berlin with one heated room de- 
creased from 195.5 P^^ 1,000 in 1875 to 132.2 in 
1895; with two heated rooms from 20.7 per 1,000 in 
1875 to 10.9 in 1895; in Frankfort, the number of 
overcrowded dwellings with one heated room was, in 
1885, 127.7 P^^ 1,000, in 1895, 43; overcrowded 
dwellings with two heated rooms in 1885, 20.3 per 
1,000, in 1895, 7.8. 

So much for the " increasing misery " in Germany. 
Now let us turn to England, 

Sir Robert Giffen in The Progress of the Work- 
ing Classes in the Last Half Century gives us some 
extremely interesting data on the subject, which we 
shall take the liberty of quoting. Giffen's tables are 
somewhat antiquated, but still interesting and in- 
structive enough for our purposes. They were com- 
piled about 1882.^ 



19 



^' Ibid., p. 130. 
^^ Ibid., p. 132. 

" We are quoting from the American edition published by 
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1885, p. 5. 



136 



MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 



Occupation 



Carpenters 

Bricklayers 

Masons 

Miners 

Pattern Weavers, etc. 

Wool Scourers 

Male Spinners 

Weavers ... 

Warpers and Beamers 
Winders and Reelers 

Weavers (Men) 

Reeling and Warping 
Spinning (Children^ 



Place 



Manchester . 

Glasgow 

Manchester . 

Glasgow 

Manchester . 

Glasgow 

Staffordshire 
Huddersfield 



Bradford .- 



^ 


H M 






w ^ 


^ « 






w 


W W 






H 










1^ g 


Amount! 


Yi < 


m ^ 






W w 








%>^ 






^ 


^H 






24s. 


3*s. 


10s. 




14s. 


26s. 


I2S. 




24s. 


3bs. 


I2S. 




ISS. 


27s. 


I2S. 




24s. 


29s. lod. 


SS. 


lod. 


14s. 


23s. 8d. 


qs. 


8d. 


2s.8d.perday 


4s. per day 


IS. 


4d. 


i6s. 


2SS. 


gs. 




17s. 


22s. 


Rs. 




25s. 6d. 


30s. 


4S. 


6d. 


I2S, 


26s. 


14s. 




17s. 


27s. 


lOS. 




6s. 


IIS. 


SS. 




8s. 3d. 


20s. 6d. 


I2S. 


3d. 


7S. 9d. 


ISS. 6d. 


7s. 


qd. 


4S. 6d. 


IIS. 6d. 


7S. 


id. 



W H 

xn \Z 

< W 

U OS 



43 

8s 

SO 

80 

24 

69 

SO 

55 

30 

20 

IIS 

58 

83 

ISO 

100 

160 



Sir Robert Giffen's figures were indorsed by Sid- 
ney Webb. He writes : 

" There seems no reason to doubt, so far as con- 
cerns the male worker, the general accuracy of Sir 
Robert Giffen's conclusion that the rise in nearly all 
the trades has been from 50 to 100 per cent. In some 
of the building trades, for instance, wages have in 
certain localities actually doubled during the present 
century. The son of a carpenter in Scotland told me 
that he remembered his father about 1850 regularly 
bringing home 34/6 as his wage — not for one, but for 
four weeks' work, the system of monthly pays not yet 
having been abolished. It is true that this was in 
the neighborhood of Inverness, but I mention the inci- 
dent to recall the fact that wages have often risen 



STATUS OF THE WAGE-EARNER 137 

most in obscure nooks and corners of the land which 
have been opened up by those great levelers of wages 
and prices — railways and the postal system. But even 
in Glasgow the minutes of the energetic Joiners' 
Union show that it was fighting hard between 1833- 
1837 to get a standard rate of 21/ per week, as against 
36/ at the present day, and the stone masons in Glas- 
gow have improved their rate of pay from 5d per hour 
in 1853, which is the earliest year for which I could 
obtain the figures, to 8^d per hour now. And if we 
turn to quite another industry, I have ascertained the 
rate of wages of enginemen at a small colliery in the 
Lothians since the year 1831. They begin at 11/ per 
week, and rise steadily, though with numerous fluctua- 
tions, to 23/4 in 1872, and no less than 33/3 per week 
in 1892." ^' 

Of course rent has greatly increased in the last dec- 
ades. So has meat increased in price, but meat 
played practically no role in the workingman's diet 
some fifty to sixty years ago. Pork advanced but 
slightly in price; 8 lbs. of pork cost in 1840 4s. 3/^d., 
in 188 1 4s. 6d. ; on the other hand many foodstuffs 
have become much cheaper. For instance, the price 
of 1 cwt. of sugar in 1839-40 was 68s. 8d., in 1882 
21S. 9d. 

That the increase in wages signified a tremendous 
increase in real wages and not in mere money wages, 

^"Sidney Webb, Labor in the Longest Reign (1837-1897). 
London, 1905, p. 4. 



138 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

is fully demonstrated by the almost incredible growth 
in England's per capita consumption, which is after all 
in the main workingman's consumption. Here is a 
table of the quantities of the principal imported and 
excisable articles retained for home consumption per 
head of the total population of the United Kingdom: 

1840 1881 

Bacon and ham lbs. o.oi 13-93 

Butter " 1.05 6.36 

Cheese " 0.92 577 

Currants and raisins " 1.45 4-34 

Eggs No. 3.63 21.65 

Rice lbs. 0.90 16.32 

Cocoa " 0.08 0.89 

Corn, wheat and wheat flour " 42.47 216.92 

Raw sugar " 15.20 58.92 

Refined sugar " nil 8.44 

Tea " 1.22 458 

Tobacco " 0.86 1.41 

Wine gals. 0.25 0.45 

Spirits " 0.97 1.08 

Malt " 1.59 1.91 

Giffen is certainly right in calling these figures 
" wonderful." ^^ And everybody must agree with him 
that such figures are the best evidence of diffused ma- 
terial well-being among the masses. 

But progress did not stop with the date of Giffen's 
investigation. Bowley's figures begin just where Gif- 
fen's stop, namely in 1882. Here are the conclusions 
of England's best statistician : ^^ 

^* GiFFEN, loC. cit., p. 20. 

*^ A. L. BowLEY, Statistical Studies: relating to National 
Progress in Wealth and Trade since 1882. London, 1904, p. 32. 



STATUS OF THE WAGE-EARNER 139 



Average money wages, 1883-87, 
taken for 100 

Average prices, ditto 

Average money income per 
head of the population, ditto. 

Consumption of commodities, 
ditto 

Percentage out of work 

Number of adult male paupers 
per 1,000 adult males 

Number of adult female pau- 
pers per 1,000 adult females. . 



1883-1887 


i888-i8g2 


1893-1897 


100 


IIO 


115 


100 


95 


90 


100 


113 


108 


100 


108 


112 


7.2 


3.8 


5-4 


35 


3Z 


38 


42 


36 


35 



-igo* 



130 
92 

120 

120 
3.5 

31 
29 



The average real wages (that is wages, expressed 
not in money, but in goods that can be purchased by 
them) in the United Kingdom Bowley expresses as 
follows, in percentages of the level of 1900: 

Years 1830, '40, '50, '60, '70, '75, '80, '85, '90, '95, 1900 

Real Wages 45 50 50 55 60 70 70 72 84 93 100 

and Bowley adds : " If this table is studied, it will be 
found that the rate of increase in the last twenty years 
has been greater than in any previous period of equal 
length." 2^ 

I will not burden the reader with any further data 
relating to the steady increase of well-being of the 
English laboring class, although we could easily fill 
a volume with such figures. We refer the more in- 
quisitive to the Journal of the Royal Statistical So- 
ciety, where they will find the information in Bowley's 
admirable articles. 



Bowley, loc. cif., p. 33. 



140 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

We could not well close without reference to the 
United States. The opinion is widespread that dec- 
ades ago the laborer found here a country flowing 
with milk and honey, but that since capitalism on a 
large scale has developed, conditions have changed for 
the worse, and that, historically considered, the situa- 
tion of the working classes in America has deteriorated 
rather than improved. 

It does not seem to us that such a view can be sup- 
ported by facts; the economist will certainly tend to 
indorse the conclusions at which a man like Levasseur 
arrived. In his Uouvrier americain Levasseur writes : 
" In the Population Frangaise I said, speaking of 
wages : ' The doubling of wages in France in the last 
sixty years is an average estimate based upon figures 
which we have collected, and which we believe to be 
correct. Like most averages, however, it may be dis- 
puted. It is not difficult to find conflicting instances 
here and there. . . . But the divergence of ex- 
tremes does not invalidate a mean when the latter is 
based upon a majority of returns.' And what I have 
said in speaking of the greater part of the states of 
Europe I now reaffirm in speaking of the United 
States." '' 

There is no doubt whatsoever that the occupation 
and exploitation of a new continent, a process which 
has not yet come to a close, offered an unprecedented 

''* E. Levasseur, The American Workman. English translation 
by T. S. Adams. Baltimore, 1900, pp. 287, 288. 



STATUS OF THE WAGE-EARNER 141 

spectacle. Res nullius cedit prinio occupanti. The 
natural resources which were nobody's were becoming 
somebody's, millions of prosperous homes were built 
on the land which the sturdy pioneers of American 
civilization had conquered. The reward of the most 
enterprising and successful was wealth never known 
of nor heard of in the past. Many, if not the ma- 
jority, of the employers of to-day began as wage- 
earners themselves. But those that have graduated 
from the laboring class we are not considering here; 
the masses that at the given time constituted and now 
constitute the laboring class, form the object of our in- 
quiry. Does or does not the condition of the working 
class in America justify the doctrine of increasing 
misery? — this is the question before us. 

Some very interesting early statistical material was 
gathered by the late Carroll D. Wright, while chief 
of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor.^^ 
These data, which are about as reliable as any early 
statistics can be, show conclusively how much as a 
rule we exaggerate the good old times. Scarce as labor 
was at the dawn of American civilization, those whom 
circumstances compelled to be laborers received very 
meager pay. In Massachusetts in 1633 ^^ thereabouts 
the wages of a master carpenter and master mason 
were about 33 cents a day; of master tailors 2y cents 
per day.^® The average price of a bushel of barley 

^^ Mass. Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Sixteenth Annual Re- 
port, Boston, 1885. ^^ Ibid., p. 429. 



142 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

was then 6"] cents, of corn 48 cents, of wheat 81 
cents; a pair of men's shoes were worth in 1672 about 
'^2i cents. " A skilled laborer made in a week's work 
only enough," writes T. S. Adams, " to buy about four 
bushels of corn, between three and four bushels of 
peas, or between two and three bushels of wheat. Two 
and a half days' work was required to earn enough 
to buy a pair of rough shoes." ^^ The wages towards 
the end of the seventeenth century show no substantial 
change. The wages of the middle of the eighteenth 
century begin to show an increase, and they progress 
steadily from that time on. In Carroll D. Wright's re- 
port of 1885 we find the following data ^^ for the daily 
wage. The agricultural laborers received in 1760 
about 31 cents, in 1800 about 47 cents, 1830 about 80, 
i860, $1.00, 1880, $1.31; blacksmiths in 1790, 69 
cents, in 1820, 84 cents, 1830, $1.12, i860, $1.69, 
1880, $2.28; carpenters 1780, 52 cents, 1830, $1.07, 
i860, $2.03, 1880, $2.42; common laborers 1780, 37 
cents, 1800, 62 cents, 1830, 79 cents, i860, 97 cents, 
1880, $1.48; machinists 1840, $1.35, 1850, $1.62, i860, 
$2.15, 1880, $2.49; masons 1780, 66 cents, 1830, $1.22, 
i860, $1.53, 1880, $2.79; the wages of other occupa- 
tions advanced in the same proportion. '* Consolidat- 
ing and averaging the wages, . . . the general aver- 

^^ Adams and Sumner, Labor Problems, 3d ed., New York, 
1905, p. 505. 

^^ Mass. Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Sixteenth Annual Re- 
port, Boston, 1885, pp. 454, 455. 



STATUS OF THE WAGE-EARNER 143 

age increase in wages shown for the decade ending 
with i860 as compared with that ending with 1830 is 
52.3 per cent." This is Colonel Wright's conclusion.^^ 
Consolidating the prices of various types of articles of 
consumption during the same period, " the general 
average percentage of increase in prices is found to be 
9.6 per cent," ^^ figures sufficiently indicative of the 
improved financial condition of the workingman. 

In an elaborate review of wages and prices of the 
period between i860- 1878 Carroll D. Wright comes 
further to the conclusion that the ascertained relations 
of wages and prices show " in 1878 an advance over 
i860 of twenty-four and four-tenths per cent in aver- 
age weekly wages, and an average advance in cost of 
living of fourteen and a half per cent, which means 
a pecuniary betterment of ten per cent in the general 
condition of the workingman in Massachusetts in 
1878 as compared with i860, no account being made 
of the decrease in the hours of labor in many indus- 
tries." '^ 

The recent industrial development records an even 
more substantial increase. Taking the year 1890 for 
100 as a standard year, wages show the following 
average rise throughout the United States in industry 
and agriculture: 

^® Mass. Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Sixteenth Annual Re- 
port, Boston, 1885, p. 466. 

'"Ibid., p. 467. 

^^ Mass. Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Tenth Annual Report, 
P- 95. 



144 



MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 



Industry 
Relative nominal wage 
Real wage 

Farm labor with board 
Relative nominal wage 
Real wage 



1870 


1875 


1880 


1885 


i8qo 


1895 


87.3 


88.7 


92.6 


97.8 


100. 


97-4 


68.7 


72. 5 


82.8 


q8.2 


100. 


102.0 


? 


qo.8 


83.8 


gq.i 


lOO.O 


g6.5 


? 


74-3 


82.6 


qo.5 


lOO.O 


lOI.O 



1900 



103. 1 

104.5 

II3.0 
II6.3 



This is an abbreviation of Adams and Sumner's 
table,^^ in explanation of which Adams writes : '* The 
year 1866 ushered in a new epoch, during which, it is 
no exaggeration to say, the American workingman 
advanced in a manner unprecedented in this country 
in which steady progress has been the rule since the 
establishment of the Union." ^^ 

We regard it as superfluous seriously to argue fur- 
ther on the subject of the increasing misery of the 
American workingman. Those interested in the rise 
of American wages will find all the details in the 
Census reports, in the Aldrich Report (especially in 
parts III and IV) and in the Bulletins of the Bureau 
of Labor ;^* in these pages we do not feel at liberty 
to tax the patience of the reader with further statistical 
data. 

We trust it is evident that the experience of all 

'^ Adams and Sumner, loc. cit, p. 514. 

'^ Ibid., p. 511. 

^* Especially in Bulletin 77, Wages and Hours of Labor, 1890- 
1907, and Retail Prices of Goods, 1890-1907. We call particular 
attention to the tables on pp. 4 and 10. Interesting also is the 
budget material in Bulletin 54, particularly the tables on pp. 1 133 
and 1 147. 



STATUS OF THE WAGE-EARNER 145 

industrial countries without exception shows a steady 
and unprecedented improvement in the conditions of 
the working class. The tendency which was to lead to 
a breakdown of our economic organization not only 
broke down itself, but developed a counter-tendency 
in exactly the opposite direction. 

Yet what is the attitude of the theoretical leaders 
of so-called scientific socialism? They lack the good 
sense to acknowledge the facts, and are hedging behind 
subterfuges and interpretations which, while seem- 
ingly exonerating Marx on one point, reduce him to 
the level of a nonentity on all points, and they end 
up by hurling in defiance another prophecy : '' Until 
a great world-change takes place the proletariat must 
reckon with the fact that the good times are over and 
that the regular increase in real wages has reached 
its end." ^^ And we often find expressed the fear, and 
half-expressed the doctrinaire hope, that technical de- 
velopments, changes in the world market or in the 
political situation, may start the long-expected down- 
ward tendency. The role of the orthodox socialist 
in the whole matter is well characterized in what our 
lovable essayist, Samuel Crothers, has to say about 
Jonah. 

" Jonah was a prophet by profession. He received 
a call to preach in the city of Nineveh, which he ac- 
cepted after some hesitation. He denounced civic cor- 

®® Karl Kautsky, "Must the Proletariat Degenerate?", The 
International Socialist Review, February, 1909, p. 580. 



146 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

ruption and declared that in forty days the city would 
be destroyed. Having performed this professional 
duty, Jonah felt that there was nothing left for him but 
to await with pious resignation the fulfilment of his 
prophecy. But in this case the unexpected happened, 
the city repented and was saved. ^ This was gall and 
wormwood to Jonah. His orderly mind was offended 
by the disarrangement in his schedule. What was the 
use of being a prophet if things did not turn out as 
he said ? So we are told ' it displeased Jonah exceed- 
ingly, and he was angry.' Still he clung to his hope 
that, in the end, things might turn out badly^enough 
to justify his public utterances." ^^ 



"^ S. M. Crothers, By the Christmas Fire, Boston, 1908, pp. 
58, 59- 



CHAPTER VIII 

CLASS-STRUGGLE CONCEPTIONS. FORE- 
RUNNERS OF MARX 

All the doctrines of Karl Marx, scattered as they 
are in various writings, support one another and thus 
form a single theoretical system. We find, accordingly, 
that all the theses of Marx which we have exam- 
ined in the preceding parts of this study lead up 
to his class-struggle doctrine. It is on the basis of 
his economic interpretation of history that he con- 
structs his theory of the development of social life. 
Division of labor produces a division of classes, with 
the lower class in constant struggle against the upper 
class. The concentration of industry leads to a con- 
centration of capital, which, while gradually narrow- 
ing the capitalist class to a small circle of financial 
and industrial magnates, pushes the middle class — 
artisans, shop-keepers and farmers^ — into the ranks of 
wage-earners. The continuous development and fre- 
quent revolution of technique make production more 
and more independent of the workingman's skill and 
physical strength. Improved machinery displaces 
labor and makes it possible to substitute unskilled for 
skilled labor, child labor for adult labor. These 

147 



148 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

changes increase the reserve army of the unemployed 
and make the living conditions of the employed more 
and more precarious. The growing misery of the 
v^orking class increasingly accentuates and embitters 
the raging class struggle. 

Of all the doctrines of Marx no one perhaps grates 
so much upon American feeling as his doctrine of 
class struggle. All that is broadly American — the 
memory of the past, the theory of government, the 
democratic ideal and the energetic personal outlook — 
seems to rebel against such an interpretation of society. 
Yet this is a conception which permeates the whole 
Marxian system. All the doctrines which we have 
thus far examined are from a certain viewpoint but 
scaffoldings for the class-struggle doctrine. We must 
therefore endeavor to understand and criticise this 
doctrine despite disinclination and apart from precon- 
ception. 

It will be well to begin our analysis of the class- 
struggle theory with an historical excursion, for this 
may prove helpful when we are called upon to deter- 
mine what is true and what is erroneous in the Marx- 
ian doctrine. Some years ago a Russian anarchist, 
W. Tcherkesoff/ attacked the Communist Manifesto 
of Marx and Engels as a plagiarism from a pamphlet 
of Considerant.^ No attention was paid by the so- 

^ Pages of Socialist History (New York, C. B. Cooper, 114 
Fourth Ave., 1902), pp. 55-66. 
^Victor Considerant, Principes du socialisme: Manifeste de 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 149 

cialist writers to this pamphlet until the Italian scholar 
Labriola stated, in practical agreement with Tcher- 
kesoff, that the main ideas of the Communist Mani- 
festo, such as the concentration of industry and of 
capital and the increasing misery of the masses, are 
contained in the pamphlet of Considerant. It was no 
great discovery that Tcherkesoff and Labriola made. 
A more intimate acquaintance with French literature 
would have shown them that these were current con- 
ceptions, to be found in Vidal as in Pecqueur, in 
Considerant as in Louis Blanc — conceptions suggested 
by the hopeless economic conditions which followed 
in the wake of the industrial revolution, and probably 
first formulated by the great French economic thinker, 
Simonde de Sismondi.^ 

To the accusation of plagiarism directed against 
Marx, Kautsky replied that, so far as the theories of 

la democratic au dix-neuvieme Steele (ist ed., Paris, 1843; 2d ed., 
Paris, 1847). I have not seen this pamphlet, and my acquaint- 
ance with it is limited to Tcherkesoff's, Labriola's and Kautsky's 
citations. 

* Nearly all the " new ideas " are to be found in Sismondi, not 
excluding the very latest attempt of Kautsky to save Marx's 
theory of increasing misery by reinterpreting it violently in the 
sense of an increasing relative disproportion in wealth : " Thus 
the progress of industry, the progress of production . . . tends 
to increase inequality among men. The more advanced a na- 
tion is in the arts and manufactures, the greater is the differ- 
ence between the fate of those who work and that of those 
who enjoy; the more misery the former suffer, the more luxury 
the latter display." De Sismondi, Nouveaux principes d'economie 
politique ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population 
(2d ed., Paris, 1827), vol. i, p. 80. 



I50 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

concentration of wealth and of increasing misery are 
concerned, it is quite true that a number of socialist 
writers of the forties held similar views; hut that 
what distinguishes Marx from all others is his insight 
into '' the role of class struggle as the driving force 
in social development." While other socialists — in 
particular, the school of Fourier and Considerant — 
saw in increasing misery nothing but unmitigated 
misery, Marx saw in the same phenomenon the pledge 
of the inevitable struggle, the assurance of the coming 
victory.* 

* " Had Marx and Engels asserted that the socialism of the 
nineteenth century began with the Communist Manifesto, they 
would certainly have been plagiarists. Only one who was fa- 
miliar with Considerant alone of the other socialists of the time 
could maintain that they had transcribed from him in particular, 
for what the Communist Manifesto had in common with Con- 
siderant's manifesto it shared with the theories of all other 
contemporary socialists. 

" But wherein consists the particular merit of the Communist 
Manifesto if the so-called ' theories of increasing misery and 
concentration of capital ' were acknowledged by the other so- 
cialists of their time, if they all based their socialism upon the 
economic tendencies of the capitalist mode of production? 

"This merit consisted first of all in the fact that these theories 
appeared more clear-cut in the Manifesto than in any other so- 
cialist publication of their time ; and secondly in the conception 
of the role of class struggle as the driving force in social develop- 
ment, and in the application of this conception to the proletarian 
struggle. Of this the majority of the other socialists had abso- 
lutely no idea, and especially in that group to which Considerant 
belonged the class struggle was considered a most deplorable 
error. To be sure, both Considerant and his associates acknowl- 
edged the existence of the class struggle, but they did not see 
how inevitably it grew out of the economic development, and 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 151 

I cannot quite share Kautsky's viewpoint. What 
strikes me as new and characteristic in Marx is his 
effort to maintain a consistent historical realism and 
his systematic coordination of ideas which, regarded 
singly, were not original. Engels himself seemed to 
exaggerate the originality of the class-struggle con- 
ception in the Communist Manifesto.^ The antag- 
onism between poor and rich was a commonplace ob- 
servation, even in the days of classical antiquity; and 
the earliest socialist writers did not fail to take notice 
of this antagonism. Saint-Simon plainly speaks of 
the " proletarian class," describes existing law, par- 
ticularly the law of inheritance, as *' the daughter of 
the right of conquest," and shows how the many are 
exploited by the few, the latter enjoying a legal 
" monopoly of all riches." ® Saint-Simon, indeed, lays 

prepared the way for the new order of things." K. Kautsky, 
" Das Kommunistische Manifest ein Plagiat," Neue Zeit (Jahrg. 
XXIV, 1906), vol. xi, p. 698. 

^ " If Herr Duehring means . . . that our present economic 
condition, the stage attained to-day in agriculture and industry, 
is the result of a society which has developed itself in class 
antagonisms, in mastership on the one hand and in slavery on 
the other hand, he says something which is a mere commonplace 
since the publication of the Communist Manifesto." Frederick 
Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism (Anti-Duehring) , 
translated by Austin Lewis (Chicago, 1907), p. 206. 

* " The advantages and disadvantages of each position in the 
social scale are handed down by heredity; the economists have 
taken pains to verify one of the aspects of this fact, the inherit- 
ance of poverty, since they have recognized the existence in 
society of a proletarian class. To-day the whole working popu- 
lation is exploited by the men whose property they make use 



152 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

chief stress on class exploitation, although to him, ap- 
parently, class antagonism and class exploitation are 
identical conceptions. Moreover he points out that the 
degree of exploitation of one class by another has in 
the course of centuries greatly diminished/ 

But Marx was not lacking in predecessors whose 
class-struggle conception was sharply defined. French 
nineteenth-century historians needed no enlightenment 
on this point in dealing with the events which led up 
to and followed the French Revolution.^ By far the 
most interesting of these writers was Guizot, who 
was not only a great historian but a great 

of; the captains of industry themselves submit to this exploita- 
tion in their relations with the capitalists, but to an incomparably 
lesser degree; and in turn they participate in the privileges of 
the exploitation, which falls back with all its weight on the 
working class, that is, on the immense majority of the workers. 
In such a state of affairs, the workingman appears as the direct 
descendant of the slave and the serf ; he has personal liberty, he 
is no longer bound to the soil, but that is all he has attained, 
and, in this state of legal enfranchisement, he can live only 
under conditions imposed on him by a small class — that of men 
whom a law, daughter of the right of conquest, invests with the 
monopoly of all riches, that is, the power to dispose at will, and 
even in idleness, of the instruments of production." Saint- 
Simon et Enfentin, CEuvres, vol. xli, pp. 225, 226. 

^ " Antagonism, the rule of force, the exploitation of man 
by man, are to-day without doubt greatly diminished; they no 
longer manifest themselves except under forms so softened and 
tame that it seems difficult at first to appreciate their importance ; 
nevertheless they continue to exist under these forms and their 
potency is still great." Saint-Simon, loc. cit., p. 222. 

® This subject is adequately dealt with by Plekhanoff in his 
preface to the Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto 
(Geneva, 1900), pp. 14 et seq. 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 153 

statesman, and who, curiously enough, was responsi- 
ble for exiling Marx from Paris for views which 
he himself, even if indirectly, helped to formulate. 
Guizot was a thinker and writer of unflinching cour- 
age, confessedly the spokesman of the bourgeoisie and 
proud of this role. To the defense of the new order 
of things, as constituted after the Revolution, he de- 
voted his life. As a statesman, he regarded the middle 
class as the foundation of the societe nouvelle, and, as 
an historian, he glorified its deeds and struggles in past 
centuries.^ During his prime there was not a shred 
of sentimentality about him; he used his own clear 
head and nobody's obscure philosophy; and the only 
respect in which Marx's class-struggle conception can 
be regarded as an advance over Guizot's is that Marx 
interpreted economically the formation, division, an- 
tagonism and struggle of classes — an explanation 
which is lacking in Guizot. On the other hand 
Guizot makes, as early as 18 16, some truly amaz- 
ing statements. The theorists of the Revolution, 
according to him, either deceived themselves or were 
lying when they talked about the sovereignty of the 
people. It was not a question of sovereignty but of 

^ " I zealously uphold the new social order as constituted by 
the revolution, which has equality before the law as its first 
principle and the middle classes as its foundation. I glorify 
again this cause which is already so glorious by tracing it back 
into the past and discovering its interests and vicissitudes in 
the whole course of our history." Guizot, Memoires pour servir 
a rhistoire de mon temps (Paris, 1858), vol. i, p. 296. 



154 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

the conquest of one portion of the people by another.^^ 
The victorious portion comprised an immense ma- 
jority, and the doctrine of the sovereignty of the peo- 
ple added to their force. We seem always to need a 
doctrine, even if we have superior force on our side, 
simply because we love to believe and make others be- 
lieve that we are right/^ That is an interpretation of 
the origin and value of political doctrines sufficiently 
pragmatic even for our day! 

To Guizot, French history is a record of a struggle 
between two classes, which lasted for thirteen cen- 
turies, and of which the final act was the Revolution/^ 
The Revolution itself was the hour of triumph and of 
vengeance of the oppressed class; and whoever fails 
to view it in this aspect, as a class struggle, will never 



^^ This was to such an extent a matter of fact that the theorists 
of the Revolution became unconscious of it when they were 
talking theory; but their language was quite different when they 
were making practical propositions. So St. Just suggests : " The 
way to strengthen the revolution is to make it profitable to 
those who support it and ruinous to those who oppose it." Suite 
de la copie de pieces saisies dans le local que Babeuf occu- 
pait lors de son arrestation (Paris, Nivose, An V), vol. ii, 
p. 72. 

^^ Guizot, Du gouvernement de la France depuis la restauration 
et du ministere actuel (3d ed., Paris, 1820), p. 138. 

^' " The revolution was a war, a real war, like the wars between 
foreign peoples with which we are familiar. For thirteen cen- 
turies France contained two such peoples, the conqueror and 
the conquered. For thirteen centuries the conquered people 
struggled to shake off the yoke of their conqueror. Our history 
is the history of that struggle. In our day the decisive battle 
has been fought. It is called the revolution." Ibid., pp. i, 2. 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 155 

comprehend it, will never understand its successes and 
reverses, its virtues and its crimes/^ When attacked 
on account of his class-struggle conception by the press 
of his time, Guizot replied that it never occurred to 
him that he had the honor of making a discovery or 
even of finding a fresh phrase. People were saying 
the same thing hundreds of years before the Revolu- 
tion and three months before he published his book/* 
What he was stating, Guizot claimed, was neither a 
theory nor an hypothesis, but a fact in all its sim- 
plicity; a fact which it was ridiculous to question; a 
fact witnessed by the past as well as the present, by 
the conduct of the kings and the texts of their ordi- 
nances as well as by the proceedings of the States- 
General, the speeches in the Assembly, the civil code 
and the latest French constitution/^ 

What is characteristic of all the earlier writings of 
Guizot is his joy in life and in conflict, his tone of 
challenge, his contempt for all who hesitated to admit 
the class struggle. Class struggle, however, meant to 
him solely the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the 
feudal aristocracy; the working class was left out of 
consideration. Later, as the proletariat of Paris made 
itself felt more and more as a political force, and in 
proportion to the degree in which it made itself felt, 
his tone became more subdued, more cautious. In his 

^^ Ibid., -p. 139. 

^* Ibid., avant-propos dc la troisierae edition, p. vi. 

^^ Ibid., pp. XV, xvi, 



156 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

brilliant essay on " Democracy in Modern Communi- 
ties," published in 1838, he described democracy as a 
war-cry, as the banner raised by the many of lower 
rank against the few placed above them ; ^^ the con- 
sequences of this war in behalf of democracy were 
many and they were fruitful : scattered and destroyed 
were the feudal system, the caste system, the perpetual 
concentration of social privileges in the hands of the 
few, the right divine, lay or ecclesiastical ; ^^ but the 
further and continued attack in the name of democracy 
he already regarded as mischievous and capable of 
destruction only. Here is his picture of the struggle 
for democracy : 

" Political rights and privileges have been ex- 
clusively concentrated in the hands of a small number. 
This concentration no longer appears justifiable, upon 
the plea of superiority either in riches, influence, intel- 
ligence or moral and social strength. The multitude 
rises and exclaims : Let us count our numbers ; we are 
all equal ; let the power belong to the many. 

" It is thus that the new maxims oppose the old ; they 
are true when received in their negative sense and are 
powerful engines of destruction. The ancient edifice 
yields to the vigor of their attacks and falls to the 
ground. This is a fearful but, under the decrees of 
Providence, a predestined work. When the ancient 

^* GuizoT, Democracy in Modern Communities, translated from 
his essay in the Revue Frangaise (London, 1838), p. 7. 
''Ibid., p. 16. 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 157 

edifice becomes contracted, inconvenient, uninhabita- 
ble, ruinous and defended only by a corps of invalids, 
its fall is inevitable; and the battering ram, the sap 
and the mine detach it from the soil with a force that 
threatens even the soil itself. But when the work of 
destruction is consummated and the hour of recon- 
struction arrives, when the necessity of it is universally 
admitted, when it is commenced spontaneously in all 
directions, what can be more absurd, what more mis- 
chievous, than to continue still sounding the attack 
and directing against the rising edifice, to the peril 
of its artificers, the very engines which subverted the 
old one." '' 

His experience as a prime-minister during the Revo- 
lution of 1848 made him cry out for social peace and 
denounce the new class struggle as the greatest shame 
of the century. ^^ But he himself realized that his was 
but a pious wish and his voice that of one crying in 

'' Ibid., p. 45. 

^^ " The struggle between the different classes of our society 
fills our history. Nobility and third estate, aristocracy and 
democracy, bourgeoisie and workingmen, property owners and 
proletarians, — so many forms for so many different phases of 
the social struggle which has so long tormented us. And it is 
at the very time when we boast of having reached the apogee 
of civilization, it is to the sound of the most humane utterances 
that can pass the lips of men, that this struggle breaks out again 
more violent, more furious than ever ! It is a scourge, a shame 
that our age cannot endure. Internal peace, peace between all 
classes of citizens, social peace ! that is what France most des- 
perately needs, that is our cry for help." Guizot, De la De- 
mocratie en France (Paris, 1849), p. 35. 



158 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

the wilderness. He saw that the new combatant class 
that had entered the arena was young and strong and 
as arrogant as nobility or bourgeoisie had ever dared to 
be, and that the outlook for social peace was dark 
indeed.^^ He realized also that the very meaning of 
the word democracy had changed, shifted, where he 
could not follow it : it had begun to mean real democ- 
racy or, as he called it, pure and absolute democracy, 
and this new watchword foreboded new and incessant 
struggles. ^^ 

It could hardly be denied that Guizot had a clear-cut 
conception of class struggle, not only as an empirical 
fact but as an historical force, indeed as the social 
force which is ultimately responsible for the great 

'""And now a third combatant has entered the arena. The 
democratic element is divided. Against the middle classes are 
ranged the working classes, against the bourgeoisie the common 
people. Moreover this new war is a war to the death, for the 
new combatant is arrogant, exclusive, as no other class ever 
was. Only the people, they say, have a right to sovereignty; 
and no rival, old or new, noble or bourgeois, can be admitted 
to share it with him." Ihid., p. 107. 

^^ " The socialists, the communists, the montagnards want the 
republic to be a democracy pure and absolute. On this condition 
alone is the republic justifiable in their eyes. Such is the sway 
of the word democracy that no government, no party, dares to 
live, or thinks it can live, without inscribing this word on its 
standard ; and those who carry this standard highest and farthest 
believe themselves to be the strongest. Fatal notion, which 
incessantly stirs up war in our midst, social war ! We must 
extirpate this notion. This is the price of social peace, and with 
social peace, liberty, security, prosperity, dignity, all the moral 
and material blessings that peace alone can insure." Ibid., pp. 

ID, II. 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 159 

changes and readjustments that have taken place in 
the course of centuries. The actual existing interests 
accept or reject, discard or change, not only ideas and 
doctrines but even constitutions ; ^^ all these either serve 
the interests of the ruling class or express a com- 
promise between the interests of the contending classes, 
perhaps in accordance with the time-honored recipe: 
unusquisqiie tantum iuris hahet, quantum potentia 
valet. And yet Guizot was as right as he was modest 
when he said that he had made no new discoveries 
and no new statements. One hundred years earlier 
very much the same conception of politics had been 
held by Abbe Baudeau : '' ConnaUre ses interets et y 
pourvoir c'est ce qu'on appelle politique " ; and many 
of Guizot's predecessors were much keener in distin- 
guishing the interests of the working class from that 
of the tiers etat — a distinction which Guizot was very 
unwillingly compelled to make, and only by the events 
of the forties. 

No revolutionary socialist of our day, no agitator 
of the Marxian era, has ever surpassed Linguet in 
branding the class character of all existing legislation. 
According to Linguet the very essence of all law is to 
safeguard property and preserve inequality, to protect 
the rich from the poor ; to him it is a demonstrated fact 

^^ " So true is it that ideas, doctrines, constitutions themselves 
submit to the yoke of circumstance, and are accepted by the 
people only when they serve as an instrument or a safeguard for 
interests which are insistent and generally adhered to." Guizot, 
Du gouvernement de la France, p. 91. 



i6o MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

that all existing law is but a formal conspiracy against 
the vast majority of mankind. Dictated by wealth, 
the law primarily serves wealth; law is wealth's for- 
tress in the enemy's country.^^ There is an abyss 
between those that have and those that have not prop- 
erty. The necessity of living compels the latter to 
slave for the former; to work on the fields, the fruits 
of which they will not gather; to erect buildings, in 
which they will not dwell; and to beg on their knees 
for permission to enrich the rich.^* And that was 
written in 1767! 

During the French Revolution the socialistic group 
comprehended without explanation that society as 
constituted was divided into two classes. If they did 
not dwell much on the subject, it is because they took 

^^ " It is above all this inequality whose effects the laws seek 
to counterbalance, whose dangers they seek to mitigate. They 
cannot efface it. On the contrary, it is of their very essence 
to strengthen it. They are designed primarily to insure property 
rights. Further, as one can take more from a man of means 
than from one who is destitute, they are evidently a safeguard 
provided to protect the rich, against the poor. It is hard to 
believe, and yet it is fully demonstrated, that they are in a sense 
a conspiracy against the majority of mankind. It is against those 
who most need their support that their greatest force is directed. 
It is wealth that prescribes them, and again it is wealth that 
reaps the principal advantages from them. They are fortresses 
established in the interest of wealth in the midst of the enemy's 
country, where wealth alone has dangers to fear." Linguet, 
Theorie des lots civiles, ou principes fundamentaux de la sociefe 
(Londres [Paris], 1767), vol. i, pp. 195, 196. 

" Ibid., vol. i, p. 274. 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX i6i 

it for granted: class rule was the main objective of 
their attack. Their struggle, of course, was all for 
equality and " nature " against class rule. The very 
naive opening passages of Buonarroti's History of 
Baheufs Conspiracy are convincing on this point. 
" Whilst ambition, jealousy, cupidity and the blind 
love of innovation kept up a deplorable struggle among 
a people of whom some strove to reestablish the an- 
cient monarchy, others to place upon the French throne 
a new dynasty, others again to transfer power from 
one caste of society to another, but all for the purpose 
of appropriating exclusively to themselves the national 
authority and thereby those enjoyments of which au- 
thority is the source ; amid all these parties there was 
slowly formed a certain class of citizens, who, actu- 
ated by very different principles [etc., etc.] . . . 
Our divisions during the Revolution were the results 
of opposing interests and principles. While one set of 
persons (the honest) supported a system because they 
believed it to be good, another set, far more numerous, 
united themselves to the party that appeared most fa- 
vorable to their personal views of fortune and ambi- 
tion." ^^ Of course Babeuf and his followers regarded 
their own conspiracy not as in the interest of a class 
but as inspired by eternal justice and "nature"; yet 
when we read their propaganda songs we find that they 

^^ Buonarroti's History of Baheufs Conspiracy for Equality, 
translated by Bronterre (London, 1836), pp. 5, 6. 



i62 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

apparently address their appeal to a very distinct class. 
One of these songs describes the '' peuple " as robbed 
by the rich of every right.^® The complaint of an- 
other song is that " on vit des princes, des sujets, des 
opulents, des miserables; on vit des maitres, des 
valets," etc.^^ Babeuf asserted on one occasion that 
the French Revolution was a war between patricians 
and plebeians, between the rich and the poor. And he 
prophesied that the Revolution could not end so long 
as the rich had all the privileges and governed the 
state, while the poor worked like slaves without play- 
ing any role in the commonwealth.^^ 

Thus we see that Marx was not obliged to invent 
either class hatred or class struggle. Europe had al- 
ways had plenty of it, and at the beginning of the 
nineteenth century the outlook for peace was unprom- 
ising. The two great poets of Marx's own fatherland 
expected little from the nineteenth century in the way 
of peace. Schiller greeted none too optimistically the 
advent of the new century : 



^® " Dying of hunger, dying of cold, people robbed of every 
right, humbly you mourn your fate; while the brazen rich man, 
whom your kindness spared in former times, openly rejoices. 
Upstarts, gorged with gold, without trouble or care or work, 
seize the hive; and as for you, poor toiling people, eat and 
digest, if you can, iron, like the ostrich." Suite de la copie de 
pieces saisis dans le local que Babeuf occupait lors de son ar- 
restation (Paris, An V), vol. ii, pp. 78, 79. 

^^ EspiNAs, La philosophie sociale du XVIIIeme siecle et la 
Revolution (Paris, 1898), p. 248. 

^^ FouRNiERE, Les theories socialistes au XlXeme siecle, p. 355. 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 163 

'*' Das Jahrhundert ist in Sturm geschieden 
Und das neue offnet sich mit Mord.' 



-'-' 29 



And it is interesting to note that Goethe looked across 
the sea for social peace, to the new world, which had 
not inherited feudal castles and traditions of class 
hatred : 

*''' Amerika, du hast es hesser; 
Du hast im Magen keine Schlosser; 
Dich stort nicht im Innern 
Zu lebendiger Zeit ; 

Unniitzes Erinnern 
Und vergehlicher Streitf' ^^ 

But at the very same time there lived in America a 
statesman who did not seem to have any such poetical 
illusions about his own country. Madison seemed to 
think that, with or without castles, different economic 
interests were sure to produce contending classes; and 
how to check future class struggles and minimize their 
effects was the problem which he was endeavoring to 
solve. In the tenth number of the Federalist we can 
find the better part of the Marxian doctrine which we 
are now considering. Madison reasons : " From the 
protection of different and unequal faculties of ac- 

''^ " The century has ended in storm, and the new one begins 
with murder." 

^""America, your lot is happier; you have no fetters to bind 
you; useless recollections and unnecessary strife do not per- 
petually disturb you." , 



i64 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

quiring property, the possession of different degrees 
and kinds of property immediately results; and from 
the influence of these on the sentiments and views of 
the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the so- 
ciety into different interests and parties. . . . Those 
who hold and those who are without property have 
ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who 
are creditors and those who are debtors fall under a 
like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufactur- 
ing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, 
with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in 
civilized nations, and divide them into different classes 
actuated by different sentiments and views. . . . 
Either the existence of the same passion or interest in 
a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the 
majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, 
must be rendered, by their number and local situation, 
unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of op- 
pression. If the impulse and the opportunity be suf- 
3fered to coincide, we well know that neither moral 
nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate 
control." ^^ 

*^ Speaking of class struggle and its recognition in America, 
it is worth while to point out that Mr. A. M. Simons, in his 
work entitled Class Struggles in America (Chicago, 1907), mis- 
represents John Adams by quoting certain sentences which, 
separated from the context, suggest ideas quite different from 
those which Adams was endeavoring to express. On page 14 
Mr. Simons cites : 

" It is of no consequence by what name j^ou call your people, 
whether by that of freeman or of slave. In some countries the 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 165 

In investigating the extent to which class antag- 
onism was recognized before Marx, it is immaterial 
whether a particular writer advocated class struggle or 
discouraged it. The important thing is the conscious- 
ness of the existence of classes with antagonistic inter- 
ests. Even the preaching of class struggle is not 
necessarily associated with revolutionary tendencies. 

laboring men are called freemen, in others they are called slaves, 
but the difference is imaginary only. What matters it whether 
a landlord employing ten laborers on his farm gives them 
annually as much as will buy the necessaries of life or gives 
them those necessaries at short hand?" 

What Adams actually did say Mr. Simons could hardly use in 
his propaganda pamphlet. The record of Adams's speech is 
taken from Jefferson's notes, which read as follows : " Mr. 
John Adams observed, that the numbers of people were taken 
by this article as an index of the wealth of the state, and not 
as subjects of taxation; that as to this matter, it was of no 
consequence by what name you call your people, whether by 
that of freeman or of slave. In some countries the laboring 
men are called freemen, in others they are called slaves, but 
the difference is imaginary only. What matters it whether a 
landlord employing ten laborers on his farm gives them an- 
nually as much as will buy the necessaries of life or gives them 
those necessaries at short hand? The ten laborers add as much 
wealth to the state, increase its exports as much, in the one 
case as in the other. Certainly five hundred freemen produce 
no more profit, no greater surplus for the payment of taxes, 
than five hundred slaves. Therefore the state in which the 
laborers are called freemen should be taxed no more than that 
in which are those called slaves. ... A slave may indeed, 
from custom of speech, be more properly called the wealth of 
his master, than the free laborer might be called the wealth of 
his employer; but as to the state, both were equally its wealth 
and should therefore equally add to the quota of its tax." John 
Adams, Works, edited by Chas. F. Adams (Boston, 1850), vol. ii, 
p. 497. 



i66 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

It has been so, as a rule, when sounded from below; 
but class struggle has been emphasized from above as 
an appeal for class rule and class subordination. Lud- 
wig von Haller gives a fair illustration of the latter 
tendency. His work appeared in 1816, the year in 
which Guizot published his Representative Govern- 
ment. The very title is suggestive: Restoration of 
Political Science (Restauration der Staatszvissen- 
schaft). The restoration of the legitimate thrones is 
to be followed by the reenthronement of legitimate 
science; the annihilation of the hydra of the Revolu- 
tion calls for the uprooting of that false political 
science which is based upon the idea of a social com- 
pact.^^ The substance of this " restored " political 
science is the right of strength — not physical strength, 
of course, but the strength of position and of wealth. 
Instead of the sovereignty of the people, the sover- 
eignty of the one who has the power and the wealth 
to be independent; instead of authority derived or 
delegated, one's own might, one's own right — that is 
the doctrine. ^^ Von Haller saw a miniature prince in 
every landlord, merchant and manufacturer, because 

^^ " The hydra of the Revolution is destroyed as to its tools 
and largely as to its results ; let us also destroy its roots so that 
it may put forth no new leaves. The legitimate thrones are 
restored; we wish also to restore that legitimate science which 
serves the Lord, to the truth of which all creation bears wit- 
ness." Karl Ludwig von Haller, Restauration der Staats- 
wissenschaft oder Theorie des naturlich-geselUgen Zustandes 
(2d ed., 1820), vol. i, p. I. 

^^ Ihid., vol. i, p. xlix. 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 167 

these had subordinates.^* Such persons fell short of 
being real princes only in that they were without com- 
plete personal independence.^^ All superiority of 
power or wealth, he claimed, is a blessing from 
heaven.^^ And whosoever is really against revolution, 
must not only talk against it (even a Jacobin could by 
mere talk pretend to be against revolution) but must 
in all his acts do the exact opposite of what the furies 
of revolution command; he must recognize that all 
authority is from God, and that God has established 
inequality in personal fortune to the end that there 
may be great and small, high and low, etc.^^ 

To an American reader the theory of von Haller 
may seem to be simply a curiosity. In certain purely 

^* " In every landlord as well as in every merchant or manu- 
facturer I saw the image of a prince, in an aggregation of sub- 
ordinates the source, the legal foundation, as well as the limita- 
tion, of dependence and servitude." Ibid., vol. i, p. xvi. 

^^ Ibid., vol. i, p. xvii. 

^® Ibid., p. Ixxix. 

^^ " Therefore, procure assistance; pray the Lord to send la- 
borers to his vineyard. You will recognize their fitness not 
because they decry revolution and Jacobinism (for that even 
its adherents can do effectually enough with ill-concealed hypoc- 
risy), but rather because they do and promote the very opposite 
of everything which those furies command; because they be- 
lieve and recognize that all might and all authority are derived 
from God alone; that he made great and small, high and 
low, through the diversity of their fortunes; . . . because they 
leave to each one his own possessions, and do not wish to 
regulate the relations, the condition, and the possessions of 
mankind according to their own will. Whoever, on the other 
hand, regards the authority of the mighty as derived from and 
granted by the weak, ... of him beware." Ibid., p. Ixxxi. 



i68 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

philosophical aspects this may be true, but Haller's 
religious argument for class rule was the argument 
most generally approved and employed throughout the 
continent of Europe. That is the reason why a strong 
anti-religious movement, in fact a militant atheism of 
one kind or another, was the inevitable precursor of 
the revolutionary movements in France, Germany and 
Russia. To meet the mediaeval attitude of the estab- 
lished church, whether Catholic, Lutheran or Greek, 
incipient revolution invariably started with a general 
attack upon religion as such, an attack which seem- 
ingly obscured all political issues. To Americans, 
whose churches, fortunately, have developed under 
democratic auspices, the psychology of such move- 
ments must appear strange and almost incomprehensi- 
ble. And yet without a clear understanding of this 
revolutionary psychology the sweeping conquest which 
Marx's class-struggle doctrine has achieved will re- 
main equally obscure. 

To get the full flavor of the religious class-rule doc- 
trine in our own days one has to go to Russia. There 
a distinguished philosopher and defender of Russian 
autocracy, Leontyeff, will inform us that the basis of 
the Russian state and society is Greek orthodoxy, By- 
zantinism. He will tell us that the Byzantine ideal is 
discouragement in regard to everything earthly, includ- 
ing personal happiness and personal purity. Leontyeff 
will further telLtis that Byzantine Christianity teaches 
strict subordination. It teaches that the worldly, the 



/ 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 169 

political hierarchy is but the reflection of the heavenly- 
hierarchy ; that there is no equality, because the church 
teaches that even angels are not equal among them- 
selves/^ Christianity accordingly offers the surest 
and most practical means of ruling the masses of the 
people with an iron hand. But this power only true 
Christianity has, not Christianity a Veau de rose, with 
its talk about love without fear, the dignity of human 
nature and the good of mankind. ^^ Love of mankind 
is anthropolatry and is un-Christian. Fear is the 
basis of faith. Everybody can comprehend fear, fear 
of punishment here and hereafter; and who fears is 
humble, who is humble seeks authority and learns to 
love the authority above him.**^ Authority is con- 
structive, is organizing. Organization, social organ- 
ization, is by nature nothing else than chronic despot- 
ism, which is accepted by some out of love or for the 
benefit they derive from this despotism, by others out 
of fear. Progress therefore lies in limiting freedom, 
not authority.*^ 

Leontyeff, however, did a grave injustice to Luther 
and his church when he claimed for Greek orthodoxy 
the monopoly of this theory. With the social prob- 

'^ Leontyeff, Vostok, Rossia i Slovianstvo (Moscow, 1885), 
vol. i, p. 81 ; vol. ii, p. 41. See also Simkhovitch, " An Inter- 
pretation of Russian Autocracy," The International Quarterly, 
October, 1904, pp. 2, 3. 

*^ Ihid., vol. ii, p. 48. 

*" Ihid., vol. ii, pp. 268, 269. 

" Ihid., vol. ii, p. 288. 



170 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

lems of their days Luther and Melanchthon dealt in 
very much the same spirit. A prince, Luther preached, 
remains a prince no matter how tyrannical he may be. 
Those that he beheads are necessarily few, since he 
must have subjects in order to be a ruler. A Chris- 
tian must remember that Christ said : " Resist not 
evil." The demand for freedom on the part of the 
peasants outraged Luther's sensitive soul. He found 
it to be in direct contradiction to the Gospel; for did 
not Abraham and other prophets have serfs ? Besides, 
it would rob the lords of their serfs, their property! 
Such a demand, moreover, would make all men equal. 
Impossible ! An earthly kingdom cannot exist without 
inequality of persons. Some must be free, others 
serfs; some rulers, others subjects; as St. Paul says: 
" Before Christ both master and slave are one." 
Melanchthon entirely shared Luther's views. If serf- 
dom exists, it should be left alone. The Gospel does 
not require a change in the serf's condition, but it does 
require obedience to the government. Concerning the 
treatment of peasants, Melanchthon thoughtfully ob- 
served " that the Germans are such a rough, obstinate, 
bloody-minded people that they should be treated even 
more harshly than they are " ; and a nobleman who 
sought Melanchthon's opinion about freeing his peas- 
ants from certain burdens received this advice : " Your 
lordship should not abolish the old services, and your 
conscience need not be troubled on this point. Dis- 
cipline in bodily matters is well-pleasing to God; and 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 171 

if the burdens fall unequally and are too hard, we must 
remember what St. Paul says : ' The powers that be 
are ordained of God.' " *^ It is in this attitude of all 
the churches that we find the explanation of the curious 
phenomenon already noted — that all political revolu- 
tions in continental Europe were preceded by a general 
and furious onslaught on church and religion. The 
church invariably used its authority to sanction and 
uphold the existing organization of society; the revolu- 
tion invariably began by undermining the prestige of 
the church. So it was in France; so it was in Ger- 
many; so it was in Russia. 

We have seen that in France the existence of classes 
and class struggles was a commonplace conception; 
but the French spokesmen of socialism never justified 
their theories on the basis of class struggle. Their pet 
theories were not to be for the benefit of a class but 
for humanity at large ; their appeal was addressed not 
to the laboring class but to the well-meaning and just 
of all classes. The fact that various classes of society 
acted politically in accordance with their respective 
economic interests led the socialists to inveigh against 
the selfishness of existing society; but the socialist 
movement itself did not seem to them a movement 
actuated by class interest. Such was the situation in 
France. 

In Germany the political radicalism of the forties, 
for reasons indicated above, expressed itself theoretic- 

*^ Shapiro, Social Re for ni and Reformation (1909), pp. 78-83. 



172 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

ally in criticism of religion. Ludwig Feuerbach with 
his Wesen des Christenfhums swept radical Germany 
off its feet. His book appealed both to the radical 
democrats and to the socialists. Without a word about 
politics, it became in a sense a political platform. No 
modern reader of the book can see why it should have 
played such a role; but the evidence of its effectiveness 
is conclusive. Engels tells us : " And then came Feuer- 
bach's Wesen des Christ enthiims . . . one must 
have himself experienced the emancipating influence of 
this book to have a conception of it. The enthusiasm 
was universal, in a moment we all turned Feuerbach- 
ians." *^ Does this mean that they became merely 
atheists and materialists ? No ; it was Feuerbach's hu- 
^manitarian idealism, his love of mankind instead of 
love of God, his '' homo homini Deus '' and his indirect 
attack upon state, church and society as constituted 
in feudal Germany that made converts. Feuerbach 
himself later acknowledged the political meaning of 
his work. He wrote in 1846 : " Who has nothing more 
to say about me than that I am an atheist says and 
knows of me nothing. The question whether a God 
exists or does not exist, the opposition between theism 
and atheism, belongs to the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, but no longer to the nineteenth. If I am 
denying God, it means that I am opposing the denial 
of mankind; it means that instead of a situation full 
of illusions, instead of a fantastic, heavenly position, 
*' Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, pp. 10, 11. 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 173 

which in real Hfe is necessarily accompanied by an 
actual denial of mankind, I demand man's sensuous 
real place, which also necessarily means his political 
and social position. The question of God's being or 
not being is with me a question of men's being or not 
being." ** 

The essence of Christianity has been interpreted as 
the essence of human nature, which is at present un- 
realized because of the misdirection of humanity's 
yearnings. This became the thesis of German social- 
ism, of which Karl Griin and Moses Hess became the 
leading exponents. Ludwig Feuerbach's doctrine was 
to them the alpha and omega of all philosophy and of 
all political science.*^ The problem of socialism was 
how to make the people conscious of their own in- 
stincts of love and righteousness.*^ It was out of the 
question to divide humanity into classes with different 
interests; Christianity was the ideal of the people as 

** Ludwig Feuerbach, Werke (Leipzig, 1846), vol. i, pp. xiv, 

XV. 

*^"When Feuerbach is named the entire work of philosophy 
from the time of Francis Bacon to the present day has been 
mentioned. What philosophy purposes and signifies in the last 
instance has at once been stated, and humanity is thus revealed 
as the last resort of universal history. In this way one can 
work more securely because more profoundly than by bringing 
to the front wages, or competition, or the defects of constitu- 
tions and laws." Karl Grun, " Feuerbach und die Socialisten," 
Deutsches Burgerhuch fur 1845 (Darmstadt, H. Piittmann, 1844), 
p. 74- 

*^ Karl Grun, " Politik und Sozialismus," in Rheinische Jahr- 
biicher 2ur gesellschaftlichen Reform (Darmstadt, 1845), vol. i, 
p. 98. 



174 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

a whole, an instinct of the human species. All that 
the German socialists had to do was to show to the 
humane German people, without distinction of classes 
and parties, that socialism was the only actual realiza- 
tion of their natural human instincts. The German, 
moreover, was different from the Frenchman and the 
Englishman; he was no narrow-minded party man; he 
had a soul receptive to theories. To make of the 
humane German a humanitarian, i.e., a socialist, was 
only a matter of theoretical argumentation.*^ 

While the German socialists were working out their 
philosophical arguments for a humanitarian socialism, 
they were rudely surprised by a book of the young 
German scholar, Lorenz von Stein, famous in later 
years as a teacher of political science. Stein was a 
gentleman of conservative leanings, a monarchist and .'| 
a strict defender of private property, yet he came 
nearer than any other writer to being the actual fore- 
runner of Karl Marx.*^ In the socialist movement he 

^' Ibid., p. 136. 

*^ To what extent Stein influenced Marx is an open question. 
Marx was thoroughly familiar with Stein's work; his articles 
against Griin, in Das Westphdlische Dampfhoot, prove it; but 
on the other hand Marx in 1844 became acquainted with the 
same sources, the same French history, the same social struggles, 
which inspired Stein. In fact Marx corrects Stein in many 
details, and does not seem conscious of being indebted to Stein 
in any way. So, in speaking of Griin's history of the social 
movement in France and Belgium, he remarks : " It is hence 
evident that Griin's bungling composition stands far below 
Stein's book, for he at least attempted to depict the connection 
between socialistic literature and the actual development of 
French society." Das Westphdlische Dampfhoot, redigirt von 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 175 

saw a proletarian class movement; in the socialist 
theory, an inevitable class theory. In spite of its 
Hegelian phraseology, Stein's work was a realistic in- 
terpretation of half a century of French history and 
political theory/^ It was the first interpretation of 
this kind attempted by a German, and it displayed 
much deeper insight and a far keener analysis than was 
to be found in the interpretation placed upon the same 
movement by his brilliant French predecessors. So 
far as the knowledge of the present writer extends. 
Stein was the first historian of the fourth estate, the 
philosopher of its coming revolution, and the only 
one who dealt with this subject without partiality or 
bias. Stein might have well said with Spinoza : '' Cu- 
ram hiimanas actiones non ridere, non lugere, neque 

Dr. Otto Luning, Jahrg. Ill (Padeborn, Januar, 1847), p. 446. 
In the same article, on pp. 448, 449, 451, Marx criticises and 
corrects various details in Stein's book ; and on p. 456 he makes 
the interesting remark : " Stein himself betrays extreme con- 
fusion when he speaks of a political moment in the science of 
industry. He shows nevertheless that he had a correct con- 
ception of the matter, for he added that political history was 
intimately connected with political economy." Here is Marx's 
first definite suggestion of his economic interpretation of history, 
and he acknowledges that Stein was on the same track. This 
article was written in 1846. 

*" An unsigned article, " Der Socialismus in Deutschland," ap- 
peared in the Gegenwart, Heft 81 (Leipzig, 1852), pp. 517-562. 
I am quite convinced that this lengthy article was written by 
Lorenz Stein himself ; there is an overwhelming amount of 
internal evidence for such an assumption. In this article Stein 
pays to himself very high tribute and greatly exaggerates the 
political importance of his book, but he does not praise himself 
sufficiently for his real achievement — his realistic method. 



176 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

detestarij sed intelligere" ;^^^ and in the effort to un- 
derstand them Stein was successful. 

In the preface to his book, Stein declares that the 
period of political revolutions is over, but a revolution 
not less serious is impending. Just as, at the end of 
the eighteenth century, an estate of the people rebelled 
against the state, so now a class is working to over- 
throw society itself. The next revolution can only be 
a social revolution.^^ Moreover, it is not France alone 
that is confronted by this peril. No deep and far- 
reaching movement belongs exclusively to one nation. 
Where the general conditions of existence are more or 
less the same, as they are among the West European 
nations, the same social movements are bound to 
manifest themselves with greater or less force. 

The first chapter of Stein's book is entitled ^' Das 
Proletariat." The proletariat Stein defines as the class 
of those who have neither property nor education, but 
who feel that they should not be without these posses- 
sions, which alone lend value to personality. The fate 
of this class is what socialism and communism have 
in mind.^^ The first appearance of the proletariat in 

"^^ " It has been my aim not to laugh at the actions of men, 
nor yet to deplore or detest them, but simply to understand 
them." 

°^ Stein, Der Socialismus und Communismus des heutigen 
Frankreichs (Leipzig, 1842), p. iii. As regards Stein's theory 
of society and of the state, see Munroe Smith, in Political 
Science Quarterly, vol. xvi (1901), pp. 649-656. 

°^ Stein, Der Socialismus, p. 7. 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 177 

French politics was as sudden as it was dramatic. Be- 
fore the Revolution only three classes could be con- 
sidered, the nobility, the clergy and the third estate, 
classes represented in the States-General. The Revo- 
lution broke out; the king and his army surrounded 
with bayonets the Assembly of Versailles; Paris rose, 
and the people of Paris compelled the king to treat 
their representatives as a power. Another attempt was 
made by the king to regain his power; the people of 
Paris stormed the palace and the king became their 
prisoner. Who were these people who defended the 
National Assembly, imprisoned the king, formed Hen- 
riot's guard? Who were the '' tricoteiises'' and the 
" aimables faubourgs "f These were the proletariat of 
Paris, which thus made its entry upon the stage of 
French political life, never again to leave the scene. ^^ 
During the eventful years of the Revolution and of 
the first Republic this proletariat learned two things: 
it became conscious very promptly of its own impor- 
tance in everything pertaining to revolution; it also 
learned gradually to regard itself as a separate class, 
distinct from all other classes. This twofold knowl- 
edge later generations of the Paris proletariat have 
not forgotten. On the contrary, realizing their power 
and their distinct interests, they have occupied them- 
selves in working out aims of their own. Thus out 
of the propertyless, uneducated masses is rising one 
single-minded, unified social class. You may doubt its 

'^ Ihid., p. 8. 



178 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

justification, you cannot doubt its power. This is the 
new element in French society, Stein writes, " which 
may very properly be called a dangerous element ; dan- 
gerous on account of its numbers and its often tested 
courage; dangerous because of its consciousness of 
unity, dangerous because of its feeling that only 
through revolution can its aims be reached, its plans 
accomplished." ^* 

Further on Stein explains that the " poor " and the 
" proletarian " are widely differing conceptions ; that 
from time immemorial society has been divided into 
rich and poor, but that the proletarian belongs to the 
history of our own times exclusively. In our own 
days therefore we shall see the development of the sig- 
nificance of this class. That is the point of view from 
which Stein looked upon France's social movement 
and its theories. He was not preaching any doctrine, 
he was calling attention to a fact; but this fact was the 
opening of the proletarian class struggle. ^^ 

Stein's book was very annoying to the German so- 
cialists, with their Feuerbachian doctrines and their 
belief in the humanitarian instincts of mankind. Thus 
Hess, without naming Stein, refers to him as an intel- 

^* Stein, Der Socialismus, p. 9. This book was written six 
years before the Communist Manifesto! 

^° The importance of Stein as forerunner of Marx was pointed 
out first by Peter von Struve, to whom we are indebted for 
much material, in his article " Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte des 
wissenschaftHchen Sozialismus," Neue Zeit, Jahrg. XV (1897), 
vol. ii, pp. 228-235, 269-275. 



J 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 179 

lectual plebeian, who explains the origin of socialism 
by the needs of the stomach, because he himself proba- 
bly never felt other and higher necessities.^^ In an 
earlier criticism Hess accuses Stein of being realistic. 
Of course such simple words as " realistic " were not 
used in those days by German scholars. A tear on 
the cheek of his sweetheart would probably have been 
called, by a learned German of those days, not a tear 
but a manifestation of the substantialization of the 
Category of the Tragic. Stein, accordingly, is not 
described as a '' realist," but is accused of being too^ 
feeble so to mold reality as to make it fit his own self- 
consciousness, for which reason he so molds his con- 
sciousness as to fit the low and base realities of exist- 
ence.^^ According to Hess, Stein does not understand 
the socialist movement at all ; ^^ all he sees in social- 
ism is its relation to the proletariat.^^ But after all, 
reasons Hess, Stein's limitations result from his being 
an Hegelian and not being an atheist. One so handi- 
capped could not possibly grasp the positive meaning 
of socialism : he could see only its negative and de- 
structive tendencies. ^^ Equally harsh is Karl Griin. 
To him the idea that the proletariat is a separate class 

°^ M. Hess, "Ueber die sozialistische Bewegung in Deutsch- 
land," in Neue Anekdota, herausgegeben von Karl Grun 
(Darmstadt, 1845), p. 226. 

°^ [Hess], " Socialismus und Communismus," in Ein und 
zwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz, herausgegeben von Georg 
Herwegh (Zurich und Winterthur, 1843), p. 75. 

'' Ibid., p. 83. '' Ibid., p. 85. '' Ibid,, p. 91. 



i8o MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

of society and that economic conditions are re- 
sponsible for socialism seems imbecile (schwach- 
sinnig). No! Socialism is religion, religion that has 
become practical, etc.^^ 

Stein's class-struggle theory obviously made an im- 
pression on Germany, because again and again Hess 
and Griin felt themselves forced to defend the good 
character of hurnanity at large and of Germany in 
particular. In the preface to The Social Conditions of 
the Civilized World, Hess gives us in nuce his theory 
on the subject. He tells us that no single class of 
society nor this nor that form of government is re- 
sponsible for the evils from which we are suffering. 
No class of society is so heartless as to leave its fellow- 
men in misery, were there means at its disposal to 
make all men happy. We see daily in the well-to- 
do class attempts to better social conditions. The 1 
responsibility for all social evils is to be sought in lack 
of insight. The best proof against any class theory 
is the fact that, after two years of discussion, Ger- 
many's educated and well-to-do people are in the main 
already in accord with the have-nots in France.* 



62 



®^ Karl Grun, Neue Anekdota (Darmstadt, 1845), pp. 262, 
263. 

«2 « "While we are here disclosing an actual picture of the 
social conditions of all civilized lands, we are most firmly 
convinced that neither a single class of our society, — for ex- 
ample, the property-owning class, — nor this nor that form of 
government, and least of all human nature, is the fundamental 
cause of the many evils under the burden of which we groan. 
For no class of society would be so heartless as to leave its 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX i8i 

The German philosophical socialists were without 
exception insignificant people, and their theories were 
of little consequence one way or another, but on the 
eve of the outbreak of 1848 they sounded a shrill note 
of discord. These quasi-radicals, peddling atheism 
and preaching a love-feast of mankind, declared them- 
selves indifferent to political reform and to representa- 
tive government. And it was this circumstance that 
brought down upon their heads Marx with all his fury 
and with his Communist Manifesto. 

Just as they had copied Feuerbach (whose avowed 
aim, however, was a political one), so they proceeded 
to copy certain phrases of the French socialists. In 
France the people had a constitutional form of govern- 

fellow-men in misery if there were a means at its command to 
make them happy. We see, indeed, every day that especially 
among the class of property-holders^ and without doubt because 
that is also the cultured class, the attempts fundamentally to 
better our social conditions make the deepest appeal, and meet 
with the greatest sympathy; and if until now in our country 
the classes less favored of fortune have troubled themselves 
less as to the amelioration of our conditions, it is in truth 
through no ill-will on their part. Rather it is entirely owing 
to a lack of insight that they do not concern themselves with 
a worthy task, and one which is directed, above all else, toward 
the betterment of their own lot. Is not the very fact that the 
property-owning class in Germany, although it has been inter- 
ested in the social question for barely two years, is already 
in the main in accord with the proletariat of France, and that 
it is being completely carried away by the movement, — is not 
this sufficient evidence that neither this nor any other class of 
society is the cause of the existence and continuance of our 
many social evils ? " Die gesellschaftUchen Zustdnde der civili- 
sirten Welt, herausgegeben von M. Hess (Elberfeld und Iserlohn, 
JuHus Badeker, 1846), vol. i, pp. i, 2. 



i82 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

ment, and for that reason they could afford to sneer 
at constitutional government or make jokes about it. 
Nobody could take away from them their political lib- 
erties; they could therefore abuse these liberties in 
their socialist propagandist literature as much as they 
pleased. In Germany the situation was different. In 
Germany those who talked and wrote about a consti- 
tutional form of government were engaged in a dis- 
cussion de lege ferenda and not de lege lata; and 
French socialistic phrases on the subject were, from 
a campaign point of view, very much out of place. In 
fact, those who repeated them were playing into the 
hands of the reaction. Yet we hear Griin asking: 
Who demands a constitution in Prussia? and answer- 
ing: The Liberals. But, he continues, the Liberals 
are not the people. These are a few men of property 
and some writers. Under a constitution the will of a 
small minority only will rule — the minority which 
represents the vested interests. If the Silesian pro- 
letariat were conscious it would have petitioned against 
a constitution. But since that proletariat is not a con- 
scious group, we are acting in its name, we are pro- 
testing against a constitution.^^ Arnold Ruge, one of 

' '^ " A constitution is governed by law, which is the heads- 
man, so to speak, who executes ruthlessly the will of a small 
minority, assuming an artful appearance of being an infinite 
majority, and, indeed, of representing the will of the whole 
country. Were the Silesian proletariat conscious, and did its 
fights correspond to its consciousness, it would have petitioned 
against the constitution. The proletariat, however, has neither 



FORERUNNERS OF MARX 183 

the leading democratic writers of the time, represents 
Hess as declaring that all the talk about a republic, 
a jury system and a free press is nonsense; that it 
only leads to the tyranny of the property-holders over 
the majority of mankind.^* Hess himself tells us that 
he is disgusted with the liberal-political aspirations, 
and that he is disposed to trust the heart of a Prussian 
monarch rather than a French Chamber of Deputies.®^ 
Thus German philosophical socialism had ceased to be 
harmless nonsense, it had actually become politically 
reactionary — a circumstance which did not endear its 
advocates and their theories to Marx and to Engels. 



consciousness nor rights. We are therefore acting in its name. 
We protest." K. Grun, " Politik und Sozialismus," in Rhein- 
ische Jahrhucher ziir gesellschaftlichen Reform (Darmstadt, 
1845), vol. i, p. 100. 

** " The talk of freedom and political reform is out of date. 
The republic, the jury system, and the freedom of the press 
lead to nothing but the tyranny of the property-holder and 
the slavery of the masses. All political reforms, even the most 
radical, are impotent against the fundamental evils of society, 
and no longer interest the world. It is social reform that 
interests us now." Arnold Ruge, Werke (2d ed., Manheim, 
1848), vol. V, p. 39. 

^^ " Or has the Prussian monarch shown less heart for the 
misery of the poorer classes than the French Chamber of 
Deputies, or the king of France? We are so convinced by 
facts of the contrary, we are so persuaded by reflection of the 
true and fundamental causes of our social misery, that all 
political-liberal endeavor has become not merely indifferent and 
a mere matter of form to us, but actually distasteful. We are 
morally disgusted with such political liberalism if in view of 
the intellectual and physical misery of the working classes . . . 
it still chases its illusions." Hess, Die gesellschaftlichen Zu- 
st'dnde der civilisirten Welt, p. 2. 



i84 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

Marx started as a revolutionary democrat, and he 
remained first and last a philosopher of revolution. 
Not a phrasemonger but a profound dialectician, he 
was forced to abandon abstract Germany. In Paris, 
treading those hot pavements on which the Revolution 
of 1848 was hatching, breathing a heavy storm-laden 
air, he studied the social movement. There he found 
what his soul was craving: not logical antitheses, but 
classes struggling, moving and making history. Was 
it a momentary blaze, a people in fever? Even so, 
when the people have such a fever it is the king who 
dies. But no, it was no casual outburst. Nothing is 
accidental in history. Inevitable is history's majestic 
course ; it moves " nach ewigen, eheren, grossen Ge- 
set^en/' the key to which Marx felt in his hand. The 
power, it seemed to him, was already in the hands of 
that class to which his heart was so strongly drawn. 
Then why not proclaim it, why not organize the mil- 
lions of suffering humanity in the name of class strug- 
gle? ^^Why this talk about love and justice? Why 
obscure the issue just at the moment when a clear 
insight was needed? Why not tell the bourgeoisie 
that the proletariat would do to them just what they 
had done to feudalism, with the same right and the 
same necessity? Thus Marx entered the scene, carry- 
ing to their ultimate conclusion the class-struggle ideas 
of the French and trampling at the same time upon the 
various philosophical brands of home-made German 
socialism. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE 
DOCTRINE 

All political and historical philosophies have in 
common one delightful quality: they are all very hu- 
man ; they all echo our hearts' desires ; like clouds they 
may vary in shape and color, yet they always tell us 
from what corner the wind blows. Simple is the 
make-up of our political philosophies; a little informal 
logic and much specially prepared history. And yet 
were it not for political and religious sectarianism we 
might not have had any history at all. Facts were 
gathered for a purpose, and they were interpreted, 
whether by Tacitus or Orosius, Bossuet or Buckle, to 
give a substance to a shadow, to prove and visualize 
" what history teaches us." 

Mephisto thus amused himself with social science: 

" Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten lieisst, 
Dass ist im Grund der Herren eigener Geist, 
In dem die Zeiten sich hespiegelnf' ^ 

But the poor devil did not seem to realize that just 
because our histories and political doctrines truly re- 

* " What you call the spirit of the times is in reality the spirit 
of the hosts who mirror themselves in the times." 

185 



i86 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

fleet our dreams, aspirations, hesitancies and fears, 
these reflections are themselves historical monuments 
of incalculable value. To criticise a political doctrine 
abstractly and systematically is but our way of over- 
coming it. Our criticism shows that the doctrine is 
not somewhere back of us, where we can see it in per- 
spective and see through it, but right in front of us, 
barring our path; and our logical argument is a pas- 
sionate effort. All these passionate arguments, all the 
claims, ever so naive, of those that have come and 
gone before us have become precious material for a 
deeper and truer understanding of social life. 

Marx is so close to us, his arguments are so cur- 
rent, that we are compelled to take up each doctrine 
of his by itself, analyze it and show where it is want- 
ing. There is, however, a quality in Marxism of 
which we must not lose sight. Marxism as a whole is 
a class doctrine, a proletarian doctrine. Just as our 
classical political economy damned labor with its Mal- 
thusianism and its wage-fund theory, cursed the 
landed interests with its rent theory and fought like a 
wildcat with every ounce of its eternal principles 
against any and every regulation on the part of the 
state that might decrease the profits of the industrial 
bourgeoisie, — just so is Marxism a class doctrine of 
the industrial proletariat.^ Each of its theories 

^ " Marx's historical merit consists in the fact that he gave 
to the proletariat a class doctrine that corresponded to the 
imperative needs of the class struggle of the time, and this is 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 187 

breathes class feeling, whether it be the theory of 
surplus value, that of concentration of capital or that 
of increasing misery, Marx's scientific forecasts are 
but class yearnings.^ His doctrine of class struggle 
has the same quality : it is a doctrine exaggerated and 
intensified by his class bias, by his hatred of the past, 
by his hope of the future. Here his passions come 
to a focus ; here his raptures are too exultant to bother 
about conventionalities of objectivity, to care about 
outward consistency. Here he failed, but failed mag- 
nificently. The failures of the great often surpass 
the achievements of mediocrity. Marx's doctrine, 
with all its bias and all its faults, marks a signal ad- 
vancement of our science. 

There is an attempt on foot to make out of the 
Marxian class-struggle doctrine an extension of the 

the cause alike of the tremendous outward success and the inner 
weakness of his system." Franz Oppenheimer, Das Grundgesets 
der Marx'schen Gesellschaftslehre (Berlin, 1903), p. 146. 

^ " From the standpoint of the class struggle the great the- 
oretical problem was : — the origin of surplus value, that is, the 
scientific explanation of exploitation, and the tendency toward 
socialization of methods of production, or the scientific explana- 
tion of the objective foundations of the social revolution. 
Both questions were answered in the first volume [of the 
Capital], which inferred 'the expropriation of the expropriator' 
as the inevitable outcome of the production of surplus value and 
the advancing concentration of capital. The theoretical needs 
of the labor movement were on the whole satisfied by this." 
Rosa Luxemburg, " Stillstand und Fortschritt im Marxismus," 
in Vorwdrts, March 14, 1903. The unconscious admission in 
the last phrase of this Marxist writer is psychologically very 
interesting. 



i88 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

Darwinian principle of struggle for life. Such an 
interpretation is but a mouthful of big words that 
sound impressive but mean nothing. The Marxian 
version of the doctrine antedates Darwin's work by 
twelve years. The class-struggle conception itself, as 
we have seen, was set forth even earlier by Guizot 
and his predecessors; the conception of historical 
necessity and continuity was formulated by Hegel. To 
bring Marx's economic interpretation of history into 
the theory of universal evolution is at its best, as 
Labriola puts it, " a new metaphor of a new meta- 
physics." * And yet even Kautsky helped to confuse 
the issue by making of Marx's class struggle a form of 
the universal natural law of development.^ Lester F. 
Ward has thus an excuse for making the erroneous 
statement that '' the socialists, for the most part, re- 
gard the social struggle as a practical extension of the 
biological struggle into the human field." ^ Fortu- 
nately, we are in possession of a letter from Marx, 
dated 1870, in which he characterizes the first attempt 
to interpret social struggles in the light of the " strug- 
gle for life " as cheap humbug.^ 

* Labriola, Essays on the Materialistic Conception of History 
(Chicago, 1908), p. 19. 

^ " For Marx, on the other hand, the class struggle was but 
a particular instance of the universal law of evolution, whose 
essential qualities are in no case peaceful." Kautsky, Die 
historische Leistung von Karl Marx (Berlin, 1908), p. 15. 

® Lester F. Ward, " Social and Biological Struggles," Amer- 
ican Journal of Sociology, vol. xiii (1907), p. 289. 

' Karl Marx, " Briefe an Dr. L. Kugelman," Neue Zeit, Jahrg. 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 189 

Let us see how Marx and Engels themselves looked 
upon their class-struggle theory. They invariably ac- 
knovv^ledged Hegel as their teacher. It was Hegel who 
first looked upon history as a necessary, uninterrupted 
process of the evolution of mankind.^ This concep- 
tion Marx and Engels adopted; but they could not 
follow Hegel in his idealism; they did not accept his 
theory that the evolution consisted in the realization 
of the preexisting " Idea." Another very sound ob- 
jection which they raised against Hegel's doctrine 
was that " upon the one hand its essential proposition 
was the conception that human history is a process 
of evolution, which, by its very nature, cannot find its 
intellectual final term in the discovery of any so-called 
absolute truth. But on the other hand, it laid claim to 
being the very essence of this absolute truth. A sys- 
tem of natural and historical knowledge, embracing 
everything and final for all times, is a contradiction to 
the fundamental law of dialectic reasoning." ^ Fur- 

XX, vol. ii (1902), pp. 541, 542. The following is an extract 
from a letter dated June 2.'], 1870: "Mr. Lange {The Labor 
Question, 2d ed.) praises me greatly, but merely to call atten- 
tion to his own importance. One great natural law underlies 
the whole of history. This natural law is the phrase — the 
Darwinian expression employed in this way is but a phrase — • 
* struggle for life,' and the import of this phrase is the Mal- 
thusian doctrine of population, or rather his law of over- 
population. It must be admitted that this is mental indolence 
and a most impressive fashion of spreading bombastic ig- 
norance masquerading as science." 

® Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (New York, 1901), 
p. 24. « Ibid., p. 25. 



I90 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

thermore, Hegel's conception of history knows nothing 
of the relations of economic interests or of class 
struggles based upon these interests. We already 
know that Marx and Engels did not have to go far to 
hear about or see these struggles. They were there, 
on the spot, when Proudhon was cheerfully explaining 
to the French bourgeoisie : " Ce n'est pas Catilina, qui 
est a vos portes, c'est la mort " (''It is not Catiline 
who is at your gates; it is death"). But to proceed 
with Engels's history of the doctrine : " The new facts 
made imperative a new examination of all past his- 
tory. Then it was seen that all past history, with the 
/exception of its primitive stages, was the history of 
^ class struggles; that these warring classes of society 
are always the products of the modes of production 
and of exchange — in a word of the economic condi- 
tions of their time; that the economic structure of 
society always furnishes the real basis, starting from 
which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation 
of the whole superstructure of juridical and political 
institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical 
and other ideas of a given historical period. From 
that time socialism was no longer an accidental dis- 
covery of this or that ingenious brain, but the neces- 
sary outcome of the struggle between two historically 
developed classes — the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. 
Its task was no longer to manufacture a system of 
society as perfect as possible, but to examine the his- 
torico-economic succession of events from which these 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 191 

classes and their antagonism had of necessity sprung, 
and to discover in the economic conditions thus cre- 
ated the means of ending the conflict." ^*^ 

The development of the forces of production thus 
took the place of Hegel's absolute "Idea"; these 
forces moved history, and they moved it through class 
struggle. Every system of production necessitated cer- 
tain relations of production, a certain division of labor 
and certain legal institutions. In the last analysis, 
accordingly, our own social order is dependent on our 
own method of production. " As in religion man is 
governed by the products of his own brain, so in 
capitalist production he is governed by the products of 
his own hand " ; and this, according to Marx, is equally 
true of all preceding eras.^^ Social production has 
always brought about of necessity a division of labor, 
and the division of labor has divided society into 
classes. Despite all the multiplicity and variety to be 
found in the social relations of the past ages, they 
have one common trait — ^the exploitation of one part 
of society by another.^^ It does not require deep 
intuition to comprehend that a man's ideas and views 
are influenced by the conditions of his material exist- 
ence.^^ Where the existence of one group depends 
upon the exploitation of another group, the general 
ideas of these two groups are bound to be antagonistic. 

^° Ibid., pp. 26-27. 

"Marx, Capital (4th ed., London, 1891), pp. 634, 635. 

^^ Communist Manifesto, p. 44. ^^ Ibid., p. 42, 



192 MARXISM VER^SUS SOCIALISM 

The oppressor and the oppressed must stand in opposi- 
tion to each other; and "the history of all hitherto 
existing society is the history of class struggles." ^* 
In all past ages we find a complicated division of so- 
ciety into ranks and classes. In Rome patricians, 
knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages feudal 
lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, 
serfs. Modern society did not abolish class antag- 
onisms; it only substituted new classes, new antag- 
onisms, new forms of struggle in the place of the old 
ones. But, Marx continues — and this, as we shall see, 
is a crucial statement — " Our epoch, the epoch of the 
bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive fea- 
ture; it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society 
as a whole is more and more splitting up into great 
hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing 
each other : Bourgeoisie and Proletariat." ^^ With the 
development of industry the proletariat is concen- 
trated in great masses; its strength increases, and it 
becomes more and more conscious of its strength. The 
industrial proletariat forms local combinations, trade 
unions; to keep up the rate of wages, they go through 
the school of struggle. Modern means of communica- 
tion soon bring all the local organizations into close 
touch; and thus the industrial proletariat becomes or- 
ganized into a class, which is disciplined and ready for 
battle. " The proletarian movement is the self-con- 

** The opening words of the Communist Manifesto. 
*^ The Communist Manifesto, p. 13. 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 193 

scious, independent movement of the immense ma- 
jority, in the interests of the immense majority. The 
proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, 
cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole 
superincumbent strata of official society being sprung 
into the air." ^^ The proletariat is therefore the only 
really revolutionary class. Other classes are destined 
to decay, while the proletariat is marching towards 
victory. What is the proletariat clamoring for? The 
conquest of political power. Addressing himself di- 
rectly to the dominant class, Marx says: '' Your juris- 
prudence is but the will of your class made into a law 
for all, a will whose essential character and direction 
are determined by the economical conditions of exist- 
ence of your class ^^ . . . The executive of the mod- 
ern state is but a committee for managing the common 
affairs of the whole bourgeoisie." ^^ In order to ac- 
complish its task the proletariat must first of all wrest 
political power from the hands of all other classes. 
Only through a dictatorship of the proletarian class 
can the social revolution attain its object3::;:SOcialized 
production and, with it, the abolition of alL classes. 
The true socialist movement is a declaration of war, 
of civil war, of revolution — Permanent erkldrung der 
Revolution! ^^ 

''Ibid., p. 30. ''Ibid., p. 39. ''Ibid., p. 15. 

19 " While the Utopia, the doctrinaire socialism, subordinates 
the entire movement to one of its elements, and sets up in the place 
of communistic, socialistic production the mental activity of a 
single pedant, while it above all does away with the revolution- 



/. 



194 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

Thus, we see, Guizot was quite right in saying that 
no class has ever made its appearance in human history 
with more audacious demands — no sharing of power, 
no compromise, but dictatorship by the proletariat and 
the complete upheaval and uprooting of all existing 
economic and social relationships. This end cannot 
be achieved by Sunday-school picnics of parlor social- 
ists, but only by a social revolution. " Let the ruling 
i'tlasses tremble at a communistic revolution. The pro- 
I letarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They 
'have a world to win." ^^ And if promises are to be 
made good, no quarter is to be given in the winning 
of this new world. In the last number of Die neiie 
Rheinische Zeitung Marx tells us : " We are ruthless 
and want no consideration from you [the bourgeoisie]. 
When our turn comes, revolutionary terrorism will not 
be sugar-coated. . . . There is but one way of sim- 

ary class struggle, together with all that this involves, by little 
measures and large sentimentalities, — while this doctrinaire so- 
cialism which at bottom merely idealizes present society, picturing 
it without shadows and opposing its own ideal to reality . . . 
the proletariat is gathering more and more to the standard 
of revolutionary socialism and communism, which the bour- 
geoisie has had interpreted to it by Blanqui. This socialism is 
the declaration of a permanent revolution, of the dictatorship of 
the proletariat, and is a necessary agency and starting point for 
the abolition of class differences, and of all conditions of produc- 
tion upon which they rest, of all social relations which corre- 
spond to these conditions of production, resulting in the over- 
throw of all ideas which arise from these social conditions." 
Karl Marx, Die Klassenkdmpfe in Frankreich: 1848- 1850 (Ber- 
lin, 1895), PP- 94, 95- 
^^ The closing lines of the Communist Manifesto. 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 195 

plifying, shortening, concentrating the death agony of 
the old society as well as the bloody labor of the new 
world's birth — revolutionary Terror." ^^ Accordingly 
the Communist Manifesto promises that, as soon as 
the proletariat becomes the ruling class, the reorgan- 
ization of society will begin " with despotic inroads on 
the rights of property and on the conditions of bour- 
geois production." The proletariat, however, is not 
to remain permanently in dictatorship as a class, since 
with the reorganization of society on the basis of 
socialized production all classes will disappear. " Po- 
litical power, properly so-called, is merely the organ- 
ized power of one class for oppressing another. If the 
proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is 
compelled by the force of circumstances to organize it- 
self as a class, if by means of a revolution it makes it- 
self the ruling class and, as such, sweeps away by force 
the old conditions of production, then along with these 
conditions it will have swept away the conditions for 
the existence of class antagonisms and of classes gen- 
erally, and will thereby have abolished its own su- 
premacy as a class." ^^ But the proletariat is not to 
abdicate its dictatorship too soon. Let vengeance tri- 
umph-like a blue flame, let it go through the' hearts 
of the people; as a red flame, let it blaze in the cities' 
and the towns. The leaders of the proletariat must 
see to it " that the revolutionary excitement shall not 

^^ Marx, in his newspaper, Die neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 
301, May 19, 1849. " Communist Manifesto, pp. 46, 47. 



196 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

subside immediately after the victory is won. On the 
contrary, this excitement must be kept up as long as 
possible. Far from stopping so-called excesses, exam- 
ples of popular vengeance upon hated individuals and 
public buildings, with which bitter memories are asso- 
ciated, one must not only tolerate these examples but 
lead and conduct them." ^^ 

These are fruits from the tree of life, not from 
the tree of knowledge. The angel of vengeance 
penned these exhortations; yet they are illuminating 
so far as Marx the man is concerned. *' Ich bin das 
Schwert und ich bin die Flamme " ("I am the sword 
and I am the flame ") was a striking note in his life. 
But his thought was deeper and more powerful. His 
thought was constantly hunting down the cheap pet 
notions of his revolutionary predecessors and contem- 
poraries, but he could not always free himself from 
their ideas. Hence his inconsistencies were many, and 
some of them his followers have frankly acknowl- 
edged. In speaking of religions, Feuerbach observes 
that each religion is extremely rational and sensible 
in its criticism of other religions ; but what it criticises 
in another religion it will never question in its own 
doctrine.^* This was equally true of Marxism. 

But let us consider the class-struggle doctrine; and 

^^ Ansprache der Centralhehorde an den Bund, vom Mdrz, 
1850: Anhang IX der Enthiillungen iiber den Kommunisten- 
process zu Koln (Hottingen-Zurich, 1885), p. 79. 

"* " All religions are rationalistic in their attitude toward each 
other, but as far as they themselves are concerned they are 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 197 

let us ask, first of all, what is a '' class " ? Marx was 
about to answer the question, when death interrupted 
his work in the middle of a sentence; and the faithful 
Engels, who edited the third volume of the Capital, 
informs us : " Hier bricht das Manuscript ab " (" Here 
the manuscript breaks off"). But the answer is not 
difficult : groups having similar sources of revenue and 
conscious of similar or identical economic interests 
may be called social classes. Of course a class does 
not exist in flesh and blood, any more than the " ordo 
felis " of the zoological textbooks. It is a matter of 
grouping; and we accept an economic classification of 
society as scientifically useful. The significance of 
social classes, however, may easily be misinterpreted. 
Marx dealt with such classes as political economy had 
long dealt with the economic man. The economic man 
is entirely actuated by his personal economic interests. 
It is doubtful whether Wall Street could exhibit a per- 
fect specimen of an economic man. The social class 
is an ideal body of economic men whose economic in- 
terests coincide : it represents a community of interests. 
The social classes are in constant struggle. Do in- 
terests always involve struggle? Are battle, murder 
and sudden death in the self-interest of those that die? 
A bullet in the breast is not in the interest of the one 
that gets it, but a soldier dies that his country may 

blind. For themselves they make an exception from a uni- 
versal rule, but in others they dispute what in themselves they 
never question." L. Feuerbach, Werke (Leipzig, 1846), vol. i, 
p. 66. 



198 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM . 

live. Acute and active struggle is never in the interest 
of those that struggle, but it may be in the interest of 
the nation, the group, the class. Those that participate 
in such a struggle do so out of ideal devotion and loy- 
alty to the group, not out of self-interest. This cir- 
cumstance makes class psychology much more complex 
than it appears to be in the Marxian scheme. The 
economic interests of the individual are simpler than 
his loyalties and devotions; and if class psychology is 
based v^holly or mainly on economic interests, v^ithout 
due allowance for group loyalties, it becomes simple, 
indeed, but it is inadequate. One's interests and one's 
grievances will undoubtedly influence one's ideals ; but 
to what extent it will influence them, and how much 
of other traditional and broader loyalties and inhibi- 
tions it will exclude — these are the real questions. 

Marx admits that even our revolutions require tradi- 
tions, historic memories, deeply rooted loyalties, that 
overcome our personal fears and lead us to self-sacri- 
fice and heroic action. Yet what he grants for the 
immediate past, he denies to the immediate future; he 
expects our social psychology to act to-morrow as if 
a different mechanism were installed within us. He 
tells us : " The social revolution of the nineteenth 
century cannot draw its poetry from the past, it can 
draw that only from the future. It cannot start upon 
its work before it has stricken off all superstition con- 
cerning the past. Former revolutions required historic 
reminiscences in order to intoxicate themselves with 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 199 

their issues. The revolution of the nineteenth century 
must let the dead bury their dead in order to reach its 
issue. With the former, the phrase surpassed the sub- 
stance; with this one, the substance surpasses the 
phrase." ^® 

It is well to bear in mind that a definition of a class 
does not describe the actual make-up of the class or 
indicate the character of the individuals that belong 
to it. Everv definition is, as Spinoza used to say, a 
negation. In defining a class we emphasize character- 
istics which that particular class possesses and other 
classes do not possess; we emphasize the exclusive 
characteristics; and in defining an economic class we 
include from the start as a criterion of the class an eco- 
nomic antagonism to other classes. Working with this 
criterion, we cannot talk about solidarity of classes 
with one another, because absence of such solidarity, 
uncompromising antagonism to other classes, is what 
in part constitutes a class. This is perfectly sound 
logic; but only a man of unsound mind will fail to 
see through it. Even Marx never taught that the 
struggle of class definitions makes history. In real 
life, regarded in all its aspects, a class is something 
quite different from the definition. There is a co- 
hesion, a solidarity in the society to which the indi- 
vidual members of all the classes belong. There is 
national solidarity, there is human solidarity, there 

^^ Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 
translated by Daniel De Leon (New York, 1898), p. 7. 




200 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

are a thousand and one cross-sectional solidarities and 
loyalties, all of which are ignored in our class defini- 
tion. Even Kautsky has to admit that the whole is 
bigger than any one of its constituent parts and that 
the common interests outweigh the class interests. ^^ 
If^we had class loyalties only, and if these were 
'"entirely Hofriinated by the economic interests of the 
individuals who compose the classes, then Marx's 
fundamental proposition, that the history of all hith- 
erto existing society is a history of class struggles, 
would be true. But this proposition is far from true. 
In his preface to the second edition of Capital, in 
speaking of earlier English history, Marx states : " Its 
political economy belongs to the period in which the 
class struggle was as yet undeveloped." ^^ Thus on 
the one hand we are told that all history, English his- 
tory certainly not excluded, is a history of class strug- 
gles, and on the other hand we are informed that in 
the beginning of the nineteenth century class struggle 
was as yet not developed in England. This is not 
an unintentional slip, of which an unfair advantage 
is here taken. The orthodox interpreter of Marx, 
Karl Kautsky, modifies Marx's statement regarding 

"""'The whole is greater than its parts. In the same way 
the common interest, the social interest, outweighs class interest. 

. . You forget that it is possible to deny the solidarity of 
classes, and still recognize the solidarity of mankind." 
Kautsky, " Klasseninteresse, Sonderinteresse, Gemeininteresse," 
Neue Zeit, Jahrg. XXI, vol. ii (1903), Pp. 266, 274. 

"'Marx, Capital (EngHsh 4th ed., London, 1891), p. xxii. 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 201 

the importance of the class struggle by saying that 
only under certain social conditions does class struggle 
become the motive of history ^^ — a statement quite dif- 
ferent from Marx's and of no conceivable use in 
Marx's system. Marx assumes and is searching for a 
steady continuity of the historical process. What 
really constitutes the continuity of the so-called his- 
torical process is the misinterpretation of the past in 
the light of our anticipations of the future; and the 
assumption that all history turns upon class struggle 
is the particular misinterpretation which Marx's antici- 
pations require. If class struggles flare up at times 
only and do not grow in power and magnitude, what 
assurance has Marx of the inevitable victory of the 
proletariat and of the subsequent abolition of all 
classes? To-day a furious class struggle may rage, 
as it often did in the past; to-morrow social calm 
may prevail. The mere vision and prophecy that ulti- 
mately there will be no classes, that absolute equality 
will reign, that here on earth we shall have the king- 
dom of heaven, will neither elicit antagonism nor 
attract energetic political support. Only results within 
our sphere of vision, which as a rule is narrow, will 
incite us to effort ; and the nearer our goal, the greater 
our energy. That is why, in making social theories, 

^^ " Only under certain social conditions is class struggle the 
motive of history; it is always in the last analysis the struggle 
with nature." Kautsky, Die historische Leistung von Karl 
Marx (Berlin, 1908), p. 11. 



202 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

we always begin with the end, and adopt or manu- 
facture a theory that promises the most immediate 
accompHshment of the end. Can you show me a- 
popular socialistic theory that expects the realization 
of its purpose in future centuries? I do not know 
of any. Before the industrial development made any 
substantial progress, Babeuf and Blanqui urged con- 
spiracy and forcible overthrow; Fourier and Con- 
siderant, Cabet, Owen, Thompson, Weitling and 
others urged the immediate organization of voluntary 
communities. 

Philosophically advanced, but industrially backward, 
the Germany of the forties believed in the power of 
the educated few to mold and reconstruct society, be- 
cause this was the only possible immediate relief that 
faith could offer. Radical Russia greeted Marx's 
works with prompt enthusiasm; but in the sixties, sev- 
enties and eighties Russia was a purely agricultural 
country, without any industry, and therefore without 
any industrial proletariat. Did the Russian socialists 
propose to wait for the development of a capitalistic 
industry? Not at all. They immediately abolished 
Marx's economic interpretation of history. They ar- 
gued that the capitalistic stage was entirely unnecessary 
in Russia, and that Russia could develop its socialized 
production, etc., from its village community, its mir.^^ 
All that was required was the leadership and foresight 

^® See SiMKHOViTCH, Feldgemeinschaft in Russland (Jena, 
1898), Vorwort. 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 203 

of the heroic personaHty; the masses were but passive 
material. These doctrines of the so-called " Narod- 
niki " ^^ were so firmly grounded in Russia that 
Marx's economic interpretation of history, with his 
class-struggle doctrine, his theory of concentration, 
etc., could make no headway whatsoever till Russia's 
industry began to develop with giant strides. Then 
the theories of the '^ Narodniki " melted like snow 
and orthodox Marxism swept the country. Belief in 
the heroic personality gave way to faith in the pro- 
letariat; but the collapse of capitalistic society and the 
coming of the new social regime with all its glory 
were expected, as before, in the immediate future. 
Such is human nature. 

What assurance of the future is contained in a 
theory that at times social classes are in acute strug- 
gle, but that these struggles are ordinarily followed 
by some sort of peaceful modus Vivendi f Does such 
a theory bring us any nearer to the promised land? 
Clearly not. Hence Marx's desperate assertion that all 
history is but a history of class struggles. 

It is impossible to deny the significance and the influ- 
ence of class struggles; but to reduce history to noth- 
ing but class struggles is an impossible construction.^^ 

'" SiMKHOviTCH, "Die sozial-okonomischen Lehren der rus- 
sischen Narodniki," Conrad's Jahrbucher, 1897, Bd. xiv, pp. 
641-678. 

'^ The writer is quite in sympathy with the statement of 
Tugan-Baranowsky : " The class struggle certainly cannot be 
eliminated from history; it may even be assumed that of late 



204 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

What shall we do with the Napoleonic wars, with the 
unification of Germany, with the Tartar conquest of 
Russia? Can we interpret them in the light of class 
struggle, as Bebel attempted to interpret the abolition 
movement in America and the American Civil War ? ^^ 
The discovery of printing and its influence upon the 
cultural development of Europe may also claim a 
place in history; but it would take greater inventive 
genius than Gutenberg possessed to hitch his invention 
to the class-struggle doctrine. 

From the fact that all past history bears witness of 
a subjection of one class to another, of an exploitation 
of one class by another, Marx jumped to the con- 
clusion that all history is a history of class struggles. 
Class exploitation and class struggle are, however, 



the value of this social element has increased considerably. 
In spite of this, to-day as in the past, the history of mankind 
and the history of class struggles by no means coincide, and the 
assertion of Marx and Engels to the contrary may be char- 
acterized as a great error." Tugan-Baranowsky, Theoretische 
Grundlagen des Marxismus (Leipzig, 1905), p. 129. 

'^ ". . . Then the great movement for the abolition of slavery 
in America. There, according to Bernstein's point of view, 
there were ethical standpoints which were the determining 
factors in the case. (Laughter.) There was, to be sure, sym- 
pathy for the poor slaves. (Laughter.) We see that for the 
North American bourgeoisie it was well to do away with slave 
labor, and to clear the way for modern capitalistic development. 
(Quite right!) Thousands of slaveholders were deprived of 
their property in slaves. From the ethical point of view that is 
called plain theft. (Prolonged laughter.)" Protokoll uher die 
Verhandlungen des Parteitages der sozialdemokratischen Partei 
Peutschlands, abgehalten zu Hannover, 1899, p. 121. 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 205 

widely differing conceptions. For instance, we read 
in the Laws of Manu : '' The Brahman is lord of the 
castes. . . . Desertion of life for the sake of a 
Brahman . . . causes the ultimate bliss of outcasts. 
... [A Cudra] should serve the Brahmans for the 
sake of heaven, or for the sake of both heaven and 
livelihood. . . . Merely to serve the Brahmans is 
declared to be the most excellent occupation of a 
Cudra ; for if he does anything other than this it profits 
him nothing. . . . His means of life should be ar- 
ranged by the Brahmans ... in accordance with 
what is fitting. . . . The leavings of food should be 
given him and the old clothes ; so too the blighted part 
of the grain; so too the old furniture. . . . An ac- 
cumulation of wealth should not be made by a Cudra 
even if he is able, for a Cudra getting possession of 
wealth merely injures the Brahmans." ^^ In this, as 
in other parts of Manu, we have class legislation, 
framed for purposes of class exploitation; but we are 
not aware that the history of the Hindustani was a 
history of class struggle. 

All our economic relations are formulated in law. 
" The rules of the law," as Brooks Adams observes, 
" are established by the self-interest of the dominant 
class, so far as it can impose its will upon those who 

°^ The Ordinances of Manu, translated by A. C. Burnell, com- 
pleted and edited by E. W. Hopkins (London, Triibner, 1884), 
Lecture X, Sees. 3, 62, 122-125, 129. 



2o6 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

are weaker." "* But the weaker were never weak 
numerically ; they were weak because, for varying his- 
torical reasons, they did not assert themselves and did 
not struggle. Abject inertia, class submission, endur- 
ance without resistance, are phenomena quite as im- 
pressive as class struggle. It is this circumstance that 
led Loria to the very exaggerated ^^ statement : " It 
is not beliefs and ideas in general that constitute a 
factor in history, but only the special beliefs and ideas 
of the proprietary class. Beliefs and ideas were pres- 
ent in the hearts and minds of the slaves, the serfs 
and the wage-earners, but these beliefs and ideas have 
had not the least effect upon the march of history, 
for they have always been repressed by the beliefs 
and ideas of the patricians, the feudal lords and the 
capitalists." '^ 

The only explanation we can give for the amazing 
class submission of the past is the fact that the ruling 
class was organized. Its organization was the state; 
it therefore could prevent and discourage any organ- 
ization of the exploited classes; it could also control 
and hold in check the dissemination of ideas sub- 
versive of its interests. Last but not least, the ex- 

^* Melville M. Bigelow, Centralisation of the Law, Lecture I ; 
Brooks Adams, Nature of Law, p. 45. 

*° Loria overlooks the fact that the ideas of the ruling class 
take account of the ideas of the lower classes and reckon on 
their possible resistance. 

®® AcHiLLE Loria, The Economic Foundations of Society, 
translated by Lindley Keasbey (London, 1899), p. 371. 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 207 

ploited class was as a rule scattered all over the 
country in small groups, which circumstance alone 
offered a practically insurmountable difficulty to or- 
ganization, i.e., to power. 

The passive character of the German peasantry 
Marx himself was obliged to acknowledge : '' The 
small freeholders, the feudal tenants and the agri- 
cultural laborers never troubled their heads much 
about politics before the Revolution. ... It is 
quite as evident and equally borne out by the history 
of all modern countries that the agricultural popula- 
tion, in consequence of its dispersion over a great 
space and of the difficulty of bringing about an agree- 
ment among any considerable portion of it, never can 
attempt a successful independent movement." ^'^ 

So much in regard to class struggles in the past ; let 
us now turn to Marx's views of class struggle in his 
own days. In his view, the struggle becomes simpli- 
fied: it narrows down to a struggle between two 
classes, capitalists and proletarians. The city rules the 
country; the middle class is being wiped out, pushed 
down into the ranks of the proletariat; and as the 
legions of the proletariat are swelling, concentration 
of capital is rapidly diminishing the number of cap- 
italists. Thus the last ruling class is tottering to its 
grave. These are startling assertions, very impor- 
tant if true; and the first question that naturally sug- 

^^ Karl Marx, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, or Gef' 
many in 1848 (London, 1904), pp. 10, 11. 



2o8 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

gests itself is : on what concrete political experiences 
are these generalizations based? 

Marx was a careful student of the French social 
movement of the time, and we have two valuable 
monographs of his on the French revolutionary move- 
ment. Both of them are determined efforts to inter- 
pret the movement in the light of his doctrine. These 
two monographs were written in 1850 and 1851. The 
failure of the Revolution he regarded as only a tem- 
porary check; the breakdown of the capitalist system 
and the victory of the proletariat he expected in the 
immediate future. 

French society, however, did not present itself to 
him as divided into two classes only; rather do we 
find him dealing with a whole series of classes. At the 
outset he informs us that it was not the French bour- 
geoisie that ruled under Louis Philippe, but only a 
fraction of it: the financial magnates and the stock- 
exchange manipulators. The industrial bourgeoisie 
(the manufacturers) were in opposition, the peasant 
class and the petty bourgeoisie (small traders, etc.) 
were excluded from any participation in the affairs 
of state. We are also told that the large landed pro- 
prietors, who ruled under the July monarchy, were 
legitimist, and therefore opposed to the Orleanist gov- 
ernment.^^ In fact Marx enumerates even more 

^* Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New- 
York, 1898), p. 18; Die Klassenkdmpfe in Frankreich (Berlin, 
1895), p. 20. 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 209 

classes that were opposed to the June insurrection of 
the Paris proletariat. " The bourgeois republic won. 
On its side stood the aristocracy of finance, the indus- 
trial bourgeoisie; the middle class, the small traders 
class; the army; the slums, organized as Garde Mobile; 
the intellectual celebrities; the parson class, and the 
rural population." ^^ Have any of these classes dis- 
appeared? Have they been pushed down into the 
ranks of the proletariat? In a preceding chapter I 
have shown that middle-class incomes are on the in- 
crease in every civilized country ; that the peasant class 
and the farmer class are increasing in strength and 
prosperity; and that the conception of a steadily di- 
minishing number of capitalists (one capitalist killing 
many) is a chimera.*^ Where then is the basis for 
the statement that class struggle is reduced to a con- 
test between capitalists and proletarians? And does 
even the industrial city population form a single po- 
litical class? Marx himself distinguishes the so-called 
social slum (Lumpenproletariat) as not only not revo- 
lutionary, but as ever ready material for a reactionary 
movement, the bribed tool of the counter-revolution. 
But how is one to distinguish the reactionary slum 
proletarian from the genuine proletarian? Marx de- 
scribes the slum proletarians as gens sans feu et sans 
aveUj la^zaroni, criminals, procurers, the offal and 
wreck of all classes.*^ But is it not remarkable that 

*® Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 10. *** See Chaps, IV and V. 
*^ " They belong in great part to the slum proletariat which in 



210 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

Marx could distinguish this section of the proletariat 
at a glance while, according to his own statement, the 
working people of Paris could not ? Thus they cheered 
the Garde Mobile (whom Marx describes as the organ- 
ized slums), recognizing in them their fellows and 
friends who fought in February on the barricades 
But whether Marx is right or wrong in his character- 
ization of the non-revolutionary proletariat, this much 
is clear: a very large portion of the so-called pro- 
letarian population cannot be relied upon to fight the 
proletarian battles! Immediate personal interests on 
the one hand, traditional ideals and national spirit on 
the other, are powerful factors against class spirit, 
especially when the latter demands personal sacrifices. 
Perusing Marx's own story of the French struggles 
of 1848 and of the rise of Louis Bonaparte to power, 
we come to the self-evident and platitudinous con- 
clusion that, if one class presses its own interests to 
the point of jeopardizing the interests of all other 
classes, the latter will temporarily lay aside their dif- 



all large cities forms a class entirely distinct from the indus- 
trial proletariat, and which is a recruiting ground for thieves 
and criminals of all kinds. Its members, living on the refuse 
of society, are without any definite occupation, idlers, 'gens 
sans feu et sans aveu,* diversified as the structure of the 
nation to which they belong, and always * lazzaroni.' " Marx, 
Die Klassenkdmpfe in Frankreich, pp. 33, 34. 

**-"To oppose the Paris proletariat, an army of 24,000 young, 
strong, foolhardy men were chosen from their own midst. 
This garde mobile was cheered by the proletarian masses. They 
recognized in them their heroes of the barricades." Ihid., p. 34- 



42 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 211 

ferences and the aggressive class will come to grief. 
Louis Philippe and the financial aristocracy managed 
to exasperate not only the working class, but also the 
manufacturing interests, the merchants, the tradespeo- 
ple, the landed proprietors, until all these classes 
united and contributed to the success of the February 
revolution.*^ The triumph of Louis Bonaparte is at- 
tributed by Marx to the peasantry. " It was a reac- 
tion of the farmers' class, who had been expected to 
pay the costs of the February revolution." ** " The 
French government does not float in the air. Bona- 
parte represents an economic class, and that the most 
numerous in the commonwealth of France — the allot- 
ment farmer." *^ And this most numerous class is re- 
garded by Marx as the true representative of barbar- 
ism within the border-lines of civilization.*^ It was 

*^ " The provisional government which rose from the February 
barricades necessarily reflected in its composition the different 
parties which divided the victory. It could be nothing but a 
compromise of the different classes who had together overturned 
the throne in July, but whose interests were nevertheless antag- 
onistic. The great majority of its members consisted of repre- 
sentatives of the bourgeoisie. The Republican small bourgeoisie 
was represented by Ledru Rollin and Flocon, the Republican 
bourgeoisie by writers for the National, the dynastic opposi- 
tion by Cremieux, Dupont de I'Eure, etc. The laboring class 
had only two representatives, Louis Blanc and Albert." Ihid., 
pp. 24, 25. 

** Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 17. 

*^ Ibid., p. 70. 

*^"The loth of December, 1848, was the day of the peasant 
insurrection, and from that day dated the February revolution 
of the French peasantry. What marked their entrance into 



212 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

not, however, the peasantry alone that tendered Louis 
Bonaparte the crown. According to Marx he was for 
various reasons the favorite of all parties : Louis was 
the " chief of the slum proletariat." *^ The aristocracy 
of finance hailed every victory of Louis over the par- 
liament as a " victory of order," and he Vv^as recognized 
as the guardian of order on every stock exchange in 
Europe.*^ The mass of the bourgeoisie craved the pro- 
tection of a strong and unhampered government to the 
end that " it might ply its own private pursuits in 
safety." *® Manufacturing interests forgot their op- 
position to the exchange manipulators : " What is a 
diminution of profits by financial manipulators to an 
abolition of profit by the proletariat?" ^^ Finally, the 
whole bourgeoisie, " in this unspeakable and noisy con- 
fusion of fusion, revision, prorogation, constitution, 
conspiracy, coalition, emigration, usurpation and revo- 
lution, blurts out at his parliamentary republic: 
' Rather an end with fright, than fright without 
end.' " ^^ Thus ended the second republic, showing 

the revolutionary activity was an expression of clumsy cunning, 
of rascally naivete, of doltish, sublime and calculated superstition; 
it was a pathetic burlesque, an anachronism at once the work 
of genius and stupidity, a harlequinade of greatest historical 
importance, a hieroglyph undecipherable to a civihzed mind; — it 
marked unmistakably and characterized the one class which 
represented barbarism in the midst of civilization." Marx, Die 
Klassenkdmpfe in Frankreich, pp. 50, 51. 

*^ Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 41. 

*« Ihid., p. 58. *« Ibid., p. 60. 

^^ Marx, Die Klassenkdmpfe in Frankreich, p. 84. 

°^ Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 62. 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 213 

a remarkable solidarity of classes in the face of a 
threat, real or imaginary, of economic disorganiza- 
tion. 

But the revolution of 1848 and Bonaparte's coup 
d'etat belong to the past. How about the present? 
The industrial proletariat has undoubtedly grown; but 
so has the political insight of the other classes. As 
we have already seen, the middle class and the farmers 
have not been swept away; the capitalist magnates, 
instead of diminishing, have grown in number, and 
they have grown relatively much faster than the pro- 
letariat. Marx expected increasing bitterness of class 
struggle because of increasing misery. In a previous 
portion of this study it has been conclusively shown 
that the situation of the working class has improved 
greatly in the last sixty years. So this prophecy of 
Marx has also failed of fulfilment. 

Representative government based on manhood suf- 
frage has changed the character of so-called class 
struggles. It has increased their magnitude but dimin- 
ished their intensity. It has taken from them the bitter 
quality and the revolutionary character which were so 
striking in the class struggles of the past. It is rea- 
sonable that it should be so. Every law regulating 
civil affairs affects various interests. When legisla- 
tion was in the hands of privileged classes, and others 
were excluded from power, even self-expression was 
restricted or prohibited. When, for example, the po- 
litical struggle of interests was limited to the landed 



214 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

and moneyed classes, the interests of the farmer and 
of the laboring city population found no expression; 
the ruling classes walked over them. But they walked 
over a volcano. The moment the disfranchised classes 
were able to organize, their power became dangerous 
to the very existence of the state, because in the state 
they saw their enemy, in its laws, the enemy's weap- 
ons. The only thing that could save the state was the 
irrational character of the revolt. Take Russia as an 
example. There was no peasant class struggle before 
1905, but the bitterness was there. No sooner was 
the state compromised and disorganized by the 
Japanese victories, than twenty-nine millions' worth 
of property was burned by the peasants. In the Oc- 
tober days the council of labor delegates ruled Peters- 
burg. All the peasant and labor deputies in the Duma 
demanded expropriation of the nobility, expropriation 
without any indemnity even from the state. These 
and similar demands defeated the Russian revolution 
and restored to the tsar's government its power. 

In modern representative government every pro- 
posed tax and every proposed law is disputed by the 
interests which will be affected. These disputes may 
be called class struggles, but they are struggles of a 
different character. They are not revolutionary, they 
are not pushed to the point of antagonizing all other 
interests; and in these struggles there gradually de- 
velops an appreciation of the various interests and of 
their actual power. What has proven itself necessary 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 215 

a posteriori soon becomes an a priori virtue ; men fight, 
but they do so as citizens acknowledging the superior- 
ity of the interests of the commonwealth as a whole 
over their particular interests. Thus a larger patriot- 
ism develops — the patriotism of a truer democracy. 
All this has been clearly set forth by the friend and 
literary executor of Marx and Engels, Eduard Bern- 
stein, who assuredly had no other reason for acknowl- 
edging this fading of class struggles and this growth 
of a nobler and more disinterested social spirit than 
his own experience and observation of political facts 
and tendencies during his long and honest political 
career.^^ 

^^ "Regarding this 'historicar conception of Kautsky's I ven- 
ture to make the ' commercial ' remark that man has two souls, 
so to say, a double moral bookkeeping. He is placed in modern 
society as an individual, or a member of a group or class, more 
or less in opposition to the community, from which no one 
is exempt, not even the workman, so far is his ultimate good 
coincident with that of the community. Each individual, how- 
ever, is at the same time a citizen, — for the modern state recog- 
nizes no fixed distinctions, — and as such necessarily develops 
interest in the commonwealth, even if he attempts to impose its 
cost on another class than his own. The opposing interests of 
the classes will fight it out partly on the battle-ground of 
economic competition (which includes the trade union strug- 
gle), and partly — and this in constantly greater degree — in the 
legislature. From the strife of class interests the common 
interest will slowly evolve, and the more prominent the common 
interest becomes the more democratic the commonwealth. With 
the advance of democracy the class struggle must gradually 
assume aspects different from those in a state where political 
class privilege prevails. There will still be strife, but it will be 
through speech, through the press, and through the ballot, and 



2i6 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

We are talking about the increase of peace and 
good-will on earth, but it will be pointed out to us 
that in this fair country class struggles are raging as 
never before. We shall be asked whether the com- 
parison of the chronicles of our own days with the 
histories of the past does not justify Marx and the so- 
cialist doctrine. Class struggle has found its way even 
into American literature, in poetry and in art. Is not 
our social life characterized in the lines of William 
Vaughn Moody; 

" From the patient and the low 
I will take the joys they know; 
They shall hunger after vanities and still an-him- 

gered go; 
Madness shall be on the people, ghastly jealousies 

arise; 
Brother's Mood shall cry on brother up the dead 

and empty skies.'' 



all parties which bespeak the vote of democracy must pay 
tribute to the common welfare. This naturally will not come 
to pass without hypocrisy, but hypocrisy in this instance is 
exactly the tribute which class egotism pays to the common 
interest, often enough with gnashing of teeth. Willingly or 
unwillingly, however, the ultimate result will be the same: 
class interest will give way, and the common interest gain in 
power. The law-giving power will at once grow stronger in its 
opposition to the strife of economic forces, and will eventually 
exert jurisdiction over what formerly was exposed to the Wind 
struggle of particular interests." Bernstein, Sozialistische 
Kontroversen (Berlin, 1904) > PP- 68, 69. 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 217 

Two distinct points are implied in such contentions. 
First, that class struggles characterize the American 
life of to-day and did not characterize it in the past; 
secondly, that the class struggle of the industrial pro- Z)^ 
letariat is gaining in volume, power, bitterness and 
political significance. 

If by class struggles we mean evidences of friction 
of various interests, they have perhaps increased in 
volume. This is only natural in a rapidly developing 
country with a rapidly decreasing amount of elbow- 
room. That friction of interests did not exist in this 
country in the past is, however, an erroneous impres- 
sion caused by an optical illusion. Our point of view 
has shifted. At present we are increasingly inclined 
to look at politics and history from a social and eco- 
nomic point of view, and, as a result, we see what 
we are looking for — struggles between the several eco- 
nomic interests. Our conviction that class struggles 
are increasing is due in large measure to a more real- 
istic and practical point of view in our political science. 

The second implication, namely, that the proletariai 
class is growing in strength and in class consciousness 
and is marching towards victory, I am constrained to 
deny altogether. 

Class struggle and proletarian class struggle in the 
Marxian sense are two very different conceptions. A 
struggle of farming interests with manufacturing in- 
terests is a class struggle. It has, however, no bear- 
ing upon the victory of the proletariat or upon the 



2i8 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

advent of socialism. The only class-conscious strug- 
gle that is of momentous significance to Marxian 
socialism is that of the industrial proletariat, and 
nowhere is this class weaker nor are its chances 
of development anywhere slighter than in these 
United States. There are many reasons for this. 

First of all, the steady stream of immigrants of 
numerous races, creeds and tongues is bound to retard 
the growth of class solidarity. The radicals of old 
failed in their monumental attempt because of the 
confusion of tongues, and the tower of Babel remained 
unfinished. Our radicals of to-day cannot even begin 
with their new tower; the crowd is too motley, the 
diversity of its component elements too great; what it 
has in common is confusion, not solidarity. 

Secondly, our modern industrial organization is of 
such a nature that it undermines proletarian class con- 
sciousness. John R. Commons expresses it admirably 
in his article on the subject : " Promotion, where speed 
is the standard, has rich possibilities compared with 
old forms of promotion based on skill. Under the 
older forms, workmen came into the various skilled 
trades by several side entrances of apprenticeship, and 
each trade had its narrow limits upward. Under the 
newer forms, the workmen nearly all come in at the 
bottom, and the occupations are graded by easy steps 
all the way to the top. The ambitious workman ad- 
vances rapidly, and with every step his rate of pay 
increases and his work gets easier. But he remains all 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 219 

the time a part of a gang, and his earnings depend on 
the exertions of those below him. As he approaches 
the head of his gang he has the double job of a man 
who gets wages as a workman and profits on his 
fellow-workman. He begins to be paid both for his 
work and for making others work. Quite generally 
it will be found that the headmen of a gang are paid 
disproportionately high for the skill they are supposed 
to have. The difference is a payment, not for me- 
chanical skill, but for loyalty. They keep their fellows 
up to the highest pitch of exertion and they stand by 
the company in times of discontent. Their promotion 
is not a mere outlet for agitation; it is a lid on the 
agitation of others. But there is still further room for 
promotion, when the workman becomes a foreman, 
superintendent or manager. Here he ceases manual 
work and keeps others at work. He gets a salary, 
often a bonus or a share in the profits, depending for 
its amount upon the work of his former fellows. Thus 
it is that a wise system of promotion becomes another 
branch of industrial psychology. If scientifically man- 
aged, as is done by the great corporations, it produces 
a steady evaporation of class feeling. I have often 
come upon fiery socialists and ardent trade unionists 
thus vaporized and transformed by this elevating 
process." ^^ This principle of promotion from one 
class to another is fatal to the organization of a pro- 

^^ John R. Commons, " Class Conflict in America," The Amer- 
ican Journal of Sociology, vol. xiii (Chicago, 1908), pp. 760, 761. 



220 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

letariat in our democratic commonwealth, because it 
tends to leave the lower strata without able leaders. 
At the same time it carries fresh force and intelligence 
into that class which, according to the socialist theory, 
is bound to disappear. 

In the third volume of Capital Marx shows that he 
is half conscious of the situation. Speaking of credit, 
he points out that credit permits the able man without 
capital to function as a capitalist ; and he remarks that 
a class which readily takes into its own ranks the 
ablest men of the lower strata makes its rule more 
solid and more dangerous.^* This is obviously true; 
and it is equally true that nowhere are the doors of 
opportunity more widely open, that never was a cap- 
italist class more ready to welcome into its ranks men 
of promise and ability, than in the United States. 
Such conditions are fatal to a proletarian movement. 
Where there is no prejudice against a man because he 
started as a laborer, the ex-laborer cannot be expected 
to adhere to the class from which he has emerged. His 
advice is: Do likewise; and his example is one of en- 
couragement. 

Under such conditions a proletarian movement is 
confronted by a peculiar dilemma. The man that is 
fit to be a leader, an organizer of the proletariat, is 
no longer himself a proletarian. His ability raises 
him above his class; he belongs potentially to another 
class. He is fit to be a successful manager of a mill ; 
''* Marx, Das Kapital, vol. iii, Part I (Hamburg, 1894), p. 140. 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 221 

he can join the capitaHst class at any time. And 
is there in this country so deep-seated a prejudice 
against personal and material success as to restrain 
a man from succeeding economically and socially? If 
labor in the United States is not content to be led by 
cheap men, it must find men actuated by more ideal 
motives and ready to make greater sacrifices than the 
political and social tone of this country authorizes it 
to expect. 

But we shall be told that the test is in the results, 
and that trade unionism is growing. This statement 
at once raises the question: is trade unionism a pro- 
letarian class movement? This question is one which 
cannot be adequately discussed in a few pages. A few 
points, however, may be noted. The aim of trade 
unionism is to improve the conditions of the wage- 
worker; the aim of socialism is .to abolish wage labor. 
The Marxist expects the revolt of the proletarian class 
because of its increasing misery; he expects no revolt 
because of better conditions of existence. What the 
Marxist likes about trade unionism is that it organ- 
izes wage-workers and trains them in local and partial 
class struggles; what he dislikes in trade unionism 
is its exclusiveness, its refusal to take in more than 
a small portion of the proletarian class. A few 
months ago Kautsky's Erfurter Programm was trans- 
lated into English under the title, The Class Struggle. 
There we read : " Far-sighted politicians and indus- 
trial leaders have not been slow to take advantage of 



222 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

this condition. To-day the worst enemies of the work- 
ing class are not the stupid, reactionary statesmen 
who hope to keep down the labor movement through 
openly repressive measures. Its worst enemies are the 
pretended friends who encourage craft unions, and 
thus attempt to cut off the skilled trades from the rest 
of their class. They are trying to turn the most ef- 
ficient division of the proletarian army against the 
great mass, against those whose position as unskilled 
workers makes them least capable of defense." ^^ The 
tendencies of American socialism and American trade 
unionism are so different that little love is lost between 
the two camps. 

Moreover, the prospects of trade unionism itself are 
not wholly encouraging in this country. It has en- 
countered and still encounters great difficulties. Com- 
mons writes in the article already cited : ''Of the 
6,000,000 wage-earners mentioned, possibly 2,000,000 
are organized in unions. But the unions have prac- 
tically disappeared from the trusts, and are disappear- 
ing from the large corporations as they grow large 
enough to specialize minutely their labor. The* organ- 
ized workmen are found in the small establishments 
like the building trades, or the fringe of independents 
on the skirts of the trusts; on the railways where skill 
and responsibility are not yet displaced by division of 

" Kautsky, The Class Struggle, p. 182, The English transla- 
tion differs from the German text (2d ed., Stuttgart, 1892), 
where the original of the passage cited will be found on p. 213. 



MARXIAN CLASS-STRUGGLE DOCTRINE 223 

labor; in the mines where strike-breakers cannot be 
shipped in; on the docks and other places where they 
hold a strategic position. While the number of organ- 
ized workmen shows an increase in these directions, it 
shows a decrease in the others. It is in these organ- 
ized industries that the class conflict appears, and there 
the lines are drawing tighter. It is there that em- 
ployers' associations are forcing employers into line 
and are struggling to do for the medium employer 
what the trust does without association. But most of 
the unions in question are not unions of a class. They 
are unions of a trade or a strategic occupation." ^® 

We are forced to the conclusion that the proletarian 
class movement is in this country a negligible quantity. 
In all the criss-cross class struggles capital is signally 
victorious. The victories of corporate wealth have 
been so overwhelming that what capital is facing to- 
day is a coalition of all smaller interests in the name 
of democracy. 

We all know that the Constitution, as interpreted 
by the courts, has given capital a strong position. The 
fourteenth amendment, intended for the benefit of the 
negroes, protects capital from so-called " class legisla- 
tion." In the opinion of many Americans, the con- 
stitutional position of capital is impregnable and the 
sovereignty of the state is denied; but, if so, it is so 
from a static point of view only. Social life is any- 

^^ J. R. Commons, "Class Conflict in America," The American 
Journal of Sociology, vol. xiii, p. 759. 



224 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

thing but static. I therefore do not agree with Presi- 
dent Hadley's statement that " the fundamental di- 
vision of powers in the Constitution of the United 
States is between voters on the one hand and prop- 
erty owners on the other." ^^ In the long run the con- 
stitution of a country means precisely what the voters 
want it to mean. These voters of course represent 
divergent interests and strife is inevitable; but so is 
its democratic outcome — a just balance of interests. 

''And rival storms abroad are surging 
From sea to land, from land to sea, 
A chain of deepest action forging 
Round all, in wrathful energy. 
There flames a desolation, blading 
Before the thunder's crashing way; 
Yet^ Lord, Thy messengers are praising 
The gentle movement of Thy day J 



>> 58 



^^ Hadley, " The Constitutional Position of Property in Amer- 
ica," The Independent, April i6, 1908. 
°® Faust: " Prologue in Heaven." 



CHAPTER X 
THE THEORY OF CRISES 

In Marx's map of life all the paths and all the by- 
ways led to the great social revolution ; all the streams 
and all the currents were hurrying on to the great 
cataract, the cataclysm of the capitalist order of so- 
ciety. In his scheme of events Marx conceded us no 
chances whatever. No matter from what angle we 
might view our future, our doom was foreordained. 
The concentration of industry and agriculture, the so- 
cialization of all production, the massing of all wealth 
and capital in the hands of the few; the disappearance 
of the middle class, the steadily growing antagonism 
between the two remaining classes, the increasing 
misery of the proletariat and the rapid approach of 
a life and death struggle between labor and capital; the 
overwhelming legions of the proletariat, and the 
dwindling numbers of the capitalistic magnates — all 
these tendencies were making socialism inevitable. ' In 
this reasoning there seemed to be no break or flaw; 
every link in the chain was forged securely ; and, with 
the faith that Marx had in the tendencies that he 
described, the social revolution and the complete tri- 
umph of socialism seemed equally assured. 

225 



226 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

Independently of all these tendencies, however, 
seeds of corruption were disintegrating our social 
fabric, the walls of our city were shaking, and they 
were to fall and crumble before new life was to spring 
up on their ruins. Let me quote again from the Com- 
munist Manifesto: " Modern bourgeois society with its 
relations of production, of exchange and of property, 
a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of 
production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who 
is no longer able to control the powers of the nether 
world whom he has called up by his spells. . . . It is 
enough to mention the commercial crises that by their 
periodical return put on its trial, each time more 
threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois 
society. ... In these crises there breaks out an 
epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed 
an absurdity — the epidemic of overproduction. So- 
ciety suddenly finds itself put back into a state of mo- 
mentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a uni- 
versal war of devastation had cut off the supply of 
every means of subsistence; industry and commerce 
seem to be destroyed ; and why ? Because there is too 
much civilization; too much means of subsistence, too 
much industry, too much commerce. The productive 
forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to 
further the development of the conditions of bourgeois 
property ; on the contrary, they have become too pow- 
erful for the conditions by which they are fettered. 
. . . The conditions of bourgeois society are too 



THE THEORY OF CRISES 227 

narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And 
how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On 
the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of 
productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of 
new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation 
of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way 
for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by 
diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented." ^ 
The anarchy of production in our competitive system 
is bound to destroy the whole system. With striking 
vividness Engels pictured to us, in his earliest as well 
as in his latest writings, this growing revolt of the 
productive forces against the forms of production. 
The idea he got either from Fourier or from Simonde 
de Sismondi, whose master mind anticipated this the- 
ory in many details.^ But whatever may be the gene- 
alogy of the theory of crises, the fact remains that as 
early as 1844 and 1845, t>oth in his book on the Sit- 
uation of the Laboring Class in England and in his 
speech at the conferences on communism at Elberfeld, 
Engels portrayed the steeplechase of competitive in- 
dustry that leads invariably and inevitably to crises 

^ Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party 
(Chicago, Charles H. Kerr and Company), pp. 21, 22. 

^ Both the overproduction and underconsumption sides of the 
theory, the conquest of new markets as a means of overcoming 
commercial depression ; the increasing magnitude of each re- 
curring crisis — these things had been pointed out already in 
the twenties by one of the greatest and most neglected of 
economists, Sismondi. Cf. his Nouveaux principes, etc., pp. 329, 
361, Z72. 



228 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

of overproduction. The manufacturer, Engels de- 
clared in 1845, <^o^s not know the consumer or his 
needs; he manufactures not knowing where his product 
will be shipped, nor does he know how much his for- 
eign competitors are manufacturing for the same mar- 
ket; he is manufacturing blindly; and his sole con- 
solation is that his competitors are no better informed, 
and have to act in the same way.^ The obvious result 
of such anarchy in production is overproduction and 
the commercial crisis. With the extension of industry 
the magnitude of the crises and the misery of the un- 
employed increase. And as planless competitive pro- 
duction inevitably leads to crises, so, and with equal 
certainty, the existing capitalist organization will pro- 
duce the social revolution. This is as certain as a 
mathematical deduction from axiomatic premises.* 

In Engels's '' Anti-Diihring " (reprinted in his So- 
cialism, Utopian and Scientific) , these views are fur- 
ther elaborated : " The enormous expansive force of 
modern industry, compared with which that of gases 

* Engels's speech in Elberfeld, reported in Rheinische Jahr- 
hucher fur gesellschaftUche Reform (Hermann Piittman, 
Darmstadt, 1845), vol. i, pp. 47, 48. 

* " You see therefore, gentlemen, that what in beginning I 
explained as a general principle holds also in the particular 
instance, especially in regard to competition, — namely, that the 
inevitable consequence of our existing social conditions will 
under all circumstances and in all cases be social revolution. 
With the same certainty with which from given mathematical 
premises we can deduce a new equation, we can infer from 
the existing economic conditions and the principles of political 
economy an impending social revolution." Ibid., pp. 78, 79, 



THE THEORY OF CRISES 229 

is mere child's play, appears to us now as a necessity 
for expansion, both qualitative and quantitative, that 
laughs at all resistance. Such resistance is offered 
by consumption, by sales, by the markets for the 
products of modern industry. But the capacity for 
extension, extensive and intensive, of the markets, is 
primarily governed by qujte different laws, that work 
much less energetically. The extension of the markets 
cannot keep pace with extension of production, the 
collisions become periodic." ^ Here we have a precise 
theoretical statement of the Marx-Engels conception 
of crises; and it is this theory that we find in Marx's 
Capital. The crises of overproduction are not simply 
Fourier's " plethoric crises " ; ^ they are manifestations 
of the incongruity inherent in capitalist production. 
Capitalist production must expand more rapidly than 
capitalist distribution can permit consumption to ex- 
pand, and the disproportion constantly increases by 
reason of the steady increase of the productivity of 
human labor. Hence overproduction and resulting 
liquidation — an industrial cycle that ends where it 
began, in the ditch of the commercial crisis. How 
fundamental this conception is to Marx is shown in 
his theory of wages and of the industrial reserve army. 

^ Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (New York, 1901), 
p. 41. 

* Engels writes : " And the character of these crises is so 
clearly defined, that Fourier hit all of them off when he de- 
scribed the first as ' crise plethorique,' a crisis from plethora." 
Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, p. 42. 



230 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

Expansion and contraction of production are taken 
for granted as the characteristic features of capitalistic 
production. 

There has been considerable discussion of the ques- 
tion whether Marx's theory of crises is not identical 
with Rodbertus's underconsumption theory. In the 
second and third volumes of Capital we find some ap- 
parently contradictory statements. While the second 
volume ridicules the underconsumption theorists and 
the followers of Rodbertus/ the third volume em- 
phasizes, as the basic reason for all crises, limited con- 

^ " It is mere tautology to say that crises are due to lack 
of consumers who are able to pay for what they want, or of 
consumption supplied with means. The capitalistic system knows 
no consumption which does not pay except that sub forma 
pauperis, or of knaves. That wares are unsalable means simply 
that there are no purchasers to pay for them, and consequently 
no consumers. ... If, however, one wishes to lend to this 
tautology an appearance of deep import by saying that the 
working class retains too small a portion of its own product, 
and that this evil will consequently be remedied as the class 
receives a larger share and its wages increase, it need only 
be remarked that crises in each instance are engendered in 
times in which wages as a rule are rising and the working 
class is actually retaining a larger share of the part of the 
yearly products which is destined for general consumption. 
This period ought, on the contrary — from the point of view 
of these astute gentlemen who pride themselves upon their 
simple common sense ( !) — to do away with crises. It appears, 
therefore, that capitalistic production includes conditions inde- 
pendently of any beneficent or evil purpose, and that the relative 
prosperity of the working classes only temporarily permits 
these conditions, and always, to be sure, merely as the fore- 
runner of a crisis. {Ad notam fiir etwaige Anhdnger der Rod- 
bertus'schen Krisentheorie. F. Engels.)" Marx, Das Kapital, 
vol. ii (2d ed., Hamburg, 1893), pp. 385, 386. 



THE THEORY OF CRISES 231 

sumption, due to poverty of the masses, and the tend- 
ency of capitalist production to develop its productive 
forces as if the capacity of the consumer were not lim- 
ited by poverty.^ Bernstein ^ tries to explain the dif- 
ference in these statements by the lapse of time, the 
interval of thirteen or fourteen years, between the 
writing of the second and third volumes of the Cap- 
ital. But he overlooks a note in the second volume 
which contains practically the same statement as that 
cited above from the third volume/^ In so far as 
there is a contradiction, it already existed in the two 
statements of the second volume. If, however, we lay 
undue stress on faulty or inadequate explanations ad- 
vanced by Marx, we shall fail to comprehend his cen- 
tral idea, which is obvious and clear: the antithesis 



* " But as matters stand, the reproduction of capital invested 
in production depends largely upon the consuming power of 
the non-producing classes; while the consuming power of the 
laborers is handicapped partly by the law of wages, and partly 
by the fact that it can be exerted only so long as the laborers 
can be employed with profit to the capitalist class. The ultimate 
cause of all real crises always remains the poverty and re 
stricted consumption of the masses as compared with the tend- 
ency of capitalist production to develop the productive forces 
in such a way that only the absolute power of consumption of 
the entire society would be their limit." Marx, Capital, vol. iii, 
English ed., p. 568. 

^ Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism (New York, 1909), p, 75. 

^^ " The periods in which capitalist production exerts its full 
capacity regularly appear as the periods of overproduction, be- 
cause the forces of production can never operate so as not to 
produce more values than can be marketed and realized. The 
sale of commodities, the realization of capital invested in com- 
modities, i.e., the realization of surplus value as well, is, how- 





\ 



232 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

between the almost unlimited expansive force of pro- 
duction and the limited power of consumption. Un- 
equal distribution, poverty and limited power of con- 
sumption were cjuite as marked in past ages as in the 
capitalist era, but in past ages the forces of produc- 
tion were also very limited. What characterizes cap- 
italist production is the altogether disproportionate de- 
velopment of the forces of production as well as the 
accumulation of capital that yearns for further accu- 
mulation and therefore refuses to remain idle. Hence 
the constantly growing overproduction, which is 
bound to become chronic and incurable, and to lead to 
the cataclysm of our present mode of production. It 
is a striking example of Marx's revolutionary dia- 
lectics, which '' includes in its comprehension an af- 
firmative recognition of the existing state of things, 
at the same time also the recognition of the negation 
of that state, of its inevitable breaking up ; because it 
regards every historically developed social form as in 
fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its 
transient nature not less than its temporary existence; 
because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its 
essence critical and revolutionary. The contradictions 
inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress 
themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly 
in the changes of the periodic cycle through which 

ever, limited not by the needs of society as a whole, but by the 
needs of a society the greater part of which always is and 
always must remain poor." Marx, Das Kapital, vol. ii, p. 289. 



THE THEORY OF CRISES 233 

modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is 
the universal crisis." " 

In their faith in the approaching dies irae Marx and 
his followers did not differ from the Second Advent- 
ists. Nearly every commercial depression since 1850 
was heralded by them as the beginning of the end of 
capitalism. If they did not, like the Millerites, attire 
themselves in white ascension robes to meet the coming 
of the Day, it was because their ritual was different. 
They did notify the proletarians of all lands to " get 
ready." In 1896 the International Socialist Congress 
passed the following resolution : '^ The economic and 
industrial development is going on with such rapidity 
that a crisis may occur within a comparatively short 
time. The Congress, therefore, impresses upon the 
prolateriat of all countries the imperative necessity of 
learning, as class-conscious citizens, how to admin- 
ister the business of their respective countries for the 
common good." ^^ Socialist literature, both popular 
and scientific, has constantly dwelt on the coming col- 
lapse of the capitalist mode of production, for which 
conclusive proofs were always at hand. Some of these 
writings are both brilliant and eloquent, especially 
those of Kautsky.^^ The fact, however, remains that 

" Marx, Capital (fourth English ed., 1891), pp. xxx, xxxi. 

^^ Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism, p. 80. 

^^ Kautsky reproduces Marx's theory so clearly and in so 
popular a form that I venture to quote some passages : 

" The revolution in the machinery of production goes on 
uninterrupted ; the fields that it invades are ever more numerous. 



234 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

the imminent cataclysm which the Marxists have been 
prophesying for sixty odd years has failed to occur; 
and it really seems time for them to explain why it is 
still postponed. Each time the Millerites were disap- 
pointed, they revised their exegeses of Daniel and of 
Revelation. 

Marx's theory of crises has the faults that char- 
acterize all Marxian theories. On the basis of facts 
not always rightly interpreted, tendencies of social life 
are formulated. Each of these tendencies, invariably 
destructive to the general welfare, is expected to per- 
sist and to reach its highest potency unchecked and 
unhampered. Society is not expected to protect itself, 
to adjust itself or to meet situations as they arise — a 

Year after year new branches of industry are captured by 
capitalist large production, and consequently the productivity 
of labor grows incessantly, and at an ever increasing rate. 
Simultaneously with this the accumulation of new capital pro- 
ceeds without interruption. The intenser the exploitation of the 
single laborer and the larger the number of the exploited 
TaBoYers, the larger also grows the quantity of the surplus and 
"'the'^mass of wealth that the capitalist class can lay by and 
apply as capital. The capitalist system, therefore, cannot re- 
*rhain stationary; its constant expansion and the constant ex- 
pansion of its market are a vital necessity to it; to stand still 
is death. While formerly, in the days of handicraft and small 
farming, the country produced year in and year out a quantity 
of wealth, which, as a rule, increased only with the increase 
of population, the capitalist system, on the contrary, is from 
the start dependent on an incessant increase of production; 
every stoppage indicates a social malady which grows more 
painful the longer it lasts. Thus together with the periodical 
incentives to increase of production brought on by the periodical 
extensions of the market, there is a permanent pressure in this 



THE THEORY OF CRISES 235 

childish conception of historical life. Life is full of 
recuperative powers; it has more antidotes than there 
are poisons; it has counter-tendencies for every tend- 
ency ; or, as our genial Dr. Crothers puts it, " there 
is one tendency which all tendencies have in common, 
that is to develop counter-tendencies. There is, for 
example, a tendency on the part of the gypsy-moth 
caterpillar to destroy utterly the forests of the United 
States. But were I addressing a thoughtful company 
of these caterpillars I should urge them to look upon 
their own future with modest self-distrust. However 
well their program looks upon paper, it cannot be car- 
ried out without opposition. Long before the last tree 
has been vanquished, the last of the gypsy-moths may 

direction inherent in the capitalist system of production itself. 
This pressure, instead of being brought on by the extension of 
the market, compels the latter to be pushed constantly further. 
. . . The wonderful development of transportation renders 
from year to year a completer exploitation of the market possi- 
ble; but this tendency is counteracted by the circumstance that 
the market steadily undergoes a change in those very countries 
whose population has reached a certain degree of civilization. 
Everywhere the introduction of the goods of capitalist large 
production extinguishes the domestic system of small production 
and transforms the industrial and agricultural laborers into 
proletarians. This produces two important results in all the 
markets that are counted upon to absorb the surplus products 
of capitalist industry: first,; it lowers the purchasing power of 
the population and thereHy counteracts the effect of the exten- 
sion of the market; and, secondly, and more important, it lays 
there the foundation for the capitalist system of production 
by calling into existence a proletarian class. Thus capitalist 
large production digs its own grave. From a certain point on- 
ward in its development every new extension of the market 



236 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

be fighting for its life against the enemies it has 
made." ^* 

In the first place, the fundamental assumption that 
capitalist production cannot get along without foreign 
markets, that the conquest of new and further exploita- 
tion of old foreign markets is the capitalist method of 
overcoming crises — all these sweeping statements are 
unwarranted. Take Germany as an illustration. In 
spite of the colossal development of German industry, 
the domestic market is absorbing a growing proportion 
of the sum total of its production. In the period 1880- 
1900, notwithstanding the enormous extension of Ger- 
many's iron and coal industry, the export of iron sank 
from 29.3 to 7.8 per cent of the total production, and 
the export of coal from 11 to 7.3 per cent.^^ 

Further, it is admitted by Engels himself that crises 
are not increasing in frequency or in magnitude, but 
are far less disturbing than they were half a century 
ago. Even in the third volume of Capital, which still 
cherishes the roseate hope of a "' WeltkracW {" cata- 

means the rising of a new competitor. . , . For some time past 
the extension of the markets has not kept pace with the require- 
ments of capitaHst production. The latter is, consequently, more 
and more hampered and finds it increasingly difficult to develop 
fully the productive powers that it possesses. The intervals 
of prosperity become shorter; the length of the crises ever 
longer." Kautsky, The Class Struggle (Chicago, 1910), pp. 
82-85. 

^* Crothers, By the Christmas Fire, pp. 61, 62. 

^^ Tugan-Baranowsky, Theoretische Grundlagen des Marxis- 
mus (1905), pp. 231, 232. Cf. SoMBART, Die deutsche Volks- 
wirthschaft im neunsehnten Jahrhundert (1903), pp. 430, 431, 



THE THEORY OF CRISES 237 

clysm "), we are told that the modern development of 
the international market has abolished most of the 
old incubators of crises, and has generally diminished 
their danger — a most important admission, which 
really nullifies the whole prophetic theory as originally 
presented by Marx and Engels/^ And in his Social- 
ism, Utopian and Scientific, in which the cataclysm 
plays none too modest a part, Engels shows that he 
is quite aware of the fact that overproduction can be 
checked and output regulated without any preceding 
social revolution. He tells us how producers on a 
large scale in any given country unite in a pool for the 
purpose of regulating production, how they determine 
the total amount of the output, and parcel it out among 
themselves at prices fixed beforehand. He tells us, 
further, that if pools of this kind, gentlemen's agree- 
ments, etc., show tendencies of breaking up, a still 

^^ " The colossal extension of the means of transportation 
and communication — seagoing steamers, railroads, electric tele- 
graphs, the Suez Canal — have made a real world market a fact. 
The monopoly of industry formerly enjoyed by England has 
been matched by a number of competing countries ; infinitely 
greater and more varied fields have been opened in all parts of 
the world for the investment of superfluous European capital, 
so that it is much more widely distributed, and local over- 
speculation may be more easily overcome. By means of these 
things, the old breeding grounds of crises and opportunities for 
the growth of crises have been eliminated or strongly reduced. 
At the same time competition in the internal markets recedes 
before Kartels and trusts, while it is restricted in the interna- 
tional market by protective tariffs, with which all great indus- 
trial countries, England excepted, surround themselves." Marx, 
Capital, vol. iii (English translation), p. 575, Engels's note. 



238 MAR5tlSM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

greater concentration of association develops. The 
bulk of a given industry is then turned into a trust, 
a gigantic joint-stock company. " In this trust, free- 
dom of competition changes into its very opposite — 
into monopoly ; and the production without any definite 
plan of capitalist society capitulates to the production 
upon a definite plan of the invading socialistic society. 
Certainly this is so far still to the benefit and advan- 
tage of the capitalists. But in this case the exploita- 
tion is so palpable that it must break down. No na- 
tion will put up with production conducted by trusts, 
with so barefaced an exploitation of the community 
by a small band of dividend-mongers." ^^ 

Granting for argument's sake that trusts lead to 
socialism, what has happened to the elaborate Marx- 
Engels theory of crises, and to the inevitable cataclysm 
accompanied by the trumpets of the social revolution? 
What has happened to the inner contradiction between 
the ever-expanding forces of production and the lim- 
itations of consumption? Have not all these elaborate, 
even if unfounded, theories been abandoned, ex- 
changed for the simple faith that trusts may usher 
in socialism? Is not this a complete change of pro- 
gram ? What has become of universal crisis, complete 
breakdown of capitalist production, social revolution, 
dictatorship of the proletariat, general expropriation, 
and blood and thunder all along the line? 

Every tendency that Marx and Engels confided in 
^^ Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, p. 44. 



THE THEORY OF CRISES 239 

has been checked, retarded, deflected or reversed. In- 
dustry has not concentrated to any such extent as the 
fathers of scientific sociaHsm expected. Agriculture 
shows tendencies towards decentrahzation. The con- 
centration of wealth and proletarization of the middle 
class has proved a fable; the moderate incomes are 
steadily increasing in number. The idea of the grow- 
ing misery of the proletariat is abandoned, in view of 
facts that prove the opposite; the class struggle, in- 
stead of increasing, is as a whole diminishing. Com- 
mercial crises, that were to increase till they destroyed 
like an earthquake our whole industrial organization, 
are admittedly abating their fury. The argument is 
being shifted back to concentration of industry and 
agriculture, a subject that I have discussed in Chap- 
ter IV. 

Theories of crises more tenable than the Marxian 
cataclysmic theory have been elaborated,^^ but they lie 
outside of the present inquiry. What interests us is 
the fact that it is not our industrial society but the 
Marxian theory that has broken down. Among the 
American socialists there seems to be a tendency to 
forget this theory. We are told by Miss Hughan that, 

" Tugan-Baranowsky, Theoretische Grundlagen des Marxis- 
mus (Leipzig, 1905), pp. 210 et seq. Bouniatian, Wirtschafts- 
krisen und Ueherkapitalisation (Munchen, 1908), perhaps the 
best book on the subject. Tugan-Baranowsky, Studien sur 
Theorie und Geschichte der Handelskrisen in England (Jena, 
1901), pp. 1-37, 174-254. Lescure, Des Crises generates et 
periodiques de siir production (1907), pp. 455 et seq. 



240 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

according to Lucien Sanial, the acknowledged author- 
ity on crises among American sociaHsts, " Marx's 
theory was a vaHd explanation ... of all crises 
until 1880. Since that time we have entered upon the 
stage of concentration in capitalism, where the cause 
of the crisis is no longer industrial but commercial 
and financial. The investigator must now seek for the 
factors which in the course of economic evolution have 
so developed as to modify the financial and commercial 
circumstances ; he will then find only a partial and con- 
stantly less adequate explanation of each successive 
crisis in the overproduction theory of Marx." ^^ An- 
other leader of American socialism, a member of the 
national committee, seems to have abandoned Marx to 
the point of stating that '' each and every panic that 
has occurred has not the same basis." ^" 

The Marxian theory of crises as originally formu- 
lated, with its announcement of the inherent doom of 
the capitalist organization of society, might therefore 
properly be declared to be both obsolete and untenable. 
The social revolution with the dictatorship of the pro- 
letariat, which was to follow or accompany the great 
crisis, still lingers in the minds of those who have long 
since abandoned all hope of the cataclysm. Let us 
therefore examine this social revolution. 

^® HuGHAN, The Present Status of Socialism in the United 
States (1911), chapter vii and passim. 
'' Ibid. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION AND THE IN-= 
EVITABLE CATACLYSM 

Few words have been so assiduously interpreted by 
the so-called Marxists as the word '' revolution." In- 
terpretation was not infrequently necessary. The con- 
quest of political power through an armed uprising, 
preached openly, brought the agitator in continental 
Europe before the courts, under the charge of treason. 
In pleading his case he naturally tried to tone down the 
meaning of the word " revolution." ^ 

In preaching revolution in a democracy like ours the 
agitator is confronted with still greater difficulties — - 
he is not listened to by intelligent people. In a democ- 
racy the will of the majority is supposed to rule. 
There can be, therefore, no occasion for a revolution, 
unless it be a revolution of a minority against the will 
of the majority. At present there is much criticism of 
the judiciary and even of the Constitution; but it 
comes in the main from an irritated minority. Legis- 
lative acts could not be vetoed by the courts if it were 
the determined will of the majority of the people 

^ Hochverrats-Prosess wider Liebknecht, Bebel, Hepner (Ber- 
lin, 1894), pp. 7h 457, 675-679. 

241 



242 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

that the courts should not have that power. The fact 
is that the majority of the people have greater con- 
fidence in the courts than they have in the legislative 
bodies. Whatever the legal theory may be, in a 
democracy the decisions of the courts cannot in the 
long run antagonize the prevailing public sentiment. 
Revolutionary propaganda in this country and 
in England is therefore bound to fall on deaf 
ears. 

Yet Marx laid great stress on the revolution. His 
socialism is international revolutionary socialism. It 
is its adherence to the revolutionary principle, its in- 
sistence upon the capture of political power, the dic- 
tatorship of the proletariat, the overthrow of the pres- 
ent economic organization of society, that gives it a 
peculiar stamp of its own. No matter, therefore, how 
much Marx may be sugar-coated, the word " revolu- 
tion " cannot be stricken from the Marxian dictionary. 
The word may, of course, be used in various senses. 
There has been an industrial revolution, there have 
been revolutions even in fashions of hair-dressing. 
Marx often uses the word revolution in other senses 
than that attributed to it in politics; but in order to 
expurgate political revolution from his original doc- 
trine, it would be necessary to mutilate his writings 
beyond the possibility of recognition. It was not aj_ 
an economist bu t as a theorist of revolution that MarjL. 

started. All his economic and philosophical inquiries 

iiirf~ — ■ — ' 

were prosecuted to find reasons for the assumptions 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 243 

with which he started, and proofs of the conclusions 
which he had already reached. 

One might paraphrase Kant's '' Wie sind synthe- 
tische Urteile a priori moglich ? " and ask : " How is 
a social revolution possible ? " and one would have in 
a nutshell the real purpose of Marx's investigation. 
His single theories are instrumentalities, his many 
learned observations by-products of the central opera- 
tion of his mind. Back of his most abstract reason- 
ings, his seemingly purely scientific considerations, 
there is a tremendous emotional appeal. It is not an 
ethical appeal, it is simply a statement that certain 
things which he profoundly desires will assuredly take 
place — a statement not subject to debate or discussion. 
Its finality is majestic. And whatever that appeal 
may be to us, for the countless, nameless legions of the 
proletariat there is honor, there is duty, there is prom- 
ise, there is life! Is it life at its best and highest? is 
an idle question. It is life that meets death with a 
smile; " mourir en combattant." This treasure of the 
French Revolution became the heritage of the forties, 
and Marx's soul lived on it lavishly. 

" With a deathless scorn in my dying breath, 
In my hand the sword still cherished; 
' Rebellion ' still for my shout of death" ^ 

^ From Freiligrath's " Abschiedswort " on May 19, 1849, in 
the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 301. The English version cited 
is by Ernest Jones. Cf. Spargo, Karl Marx (1910), p. 165, 
where the whole poem is quoted. 



244 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

Translate these lines of Freiligrath into better prose 
and one has Marx's valedictory. No matter what 
work of Marx's one reads, one will find there no at- 
tempt at a disguise. There is the vision of the great 
revolution, and toward it lies his course. Only after 
the great social revolution, which will abolish all 
classes and class-antagonisms, can social evolutions 
cease to be political revolutions. Until then the last 
word of social science will ever be : '^ Le combat ou la 
mort; la lutte sanguinaire ou le neant." ^ In the last 
number of the Neue Rheinische Zeihing * he urges 
revolutionary terrorism.^ In other writings he tells 
us that " revolutions are the locomotives of history." ^ 
True, a revolution is an act of destruction, it abolishes 
old relationships ; but for that very reason *' socialism 
without a revolution is impossible." "^ Revolution is 
the breath of the Communist Manifesto. Let the rul- 
ing classes tremble; the proletarians have nothing to I 
lose but their chains. It is in revolution that all the 
theories of Marx's Capital converge. Its supreme mo- 
ment is when " the knell of capitalist private property 
sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. 



" 8 



' Marx, Miser e de la philosophic (Paris, 1847), p. 178. 

* No. 301, May 19, 1849. 

" For further quotations see Simkhovitch, *' Die Krisis der 
Socialdemokratie," Conrad's Jahrbiicher, vol. xvii (1899). Cf. 
also Hammacher, Das philosophisch-okonomische System des 
Marxismus (Leipzig, 1909), pp. 91-94 

* Marx, Die Klassenkdmpfe in Frankreich (Berlin, 1895), p. 90. 
'Marx und Engels, Literarischer Nachlass, vol. ii (1902), 

p. 59. ' Marx, Capital, vol. i (fourth English ed.), p. 789. 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 245 

It is thus a philosophy of revolution that Marx pre- 
sents. In this philosophy of revolution, curiously 
enough, either the philosophy stamps the idea of a 
revolution as a feverish dream, or the revolution up- 
sets the philosophy and makes it ridiculous. Marx, 
the founder of scientific socialism, the deadly critic 
of utopianism, is himself a revolutionary Utopian; 
and it is his revolutionary Utopia that has captured 
the masses and converted them to anti-utopian scien- 
tific socialism ! 

Let us take, for example, the dictatorship of the 
proletariat and its role in the social revolution. *' The 
proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, 
by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to cen- 
tralize all instruments of production in the hands of 
the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling 
class, and to increase the total of productive forces 
as rapidly as possible. Of course, in the beginning, 
this cannot be effected except by means of despotic 
inroads on the rights of property, and on the condi- 
tions of bourgeois production; that is, by means of 
measures, therefore, which appear economically insuf- 
ficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the 
movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further in- 
roads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable 
as means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of pro- 
duction." ^ 

Babeuf or Blanqui might have written this passage; 

' Communist Manifesto, pp. 44, 45. 



246 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

it would have been quite in keeping with their gen- 
eral point of view — that of conspiracy and forcible 
overthrow. They believed that the socialist common- 
wealth could be decreed at any time by the victorious 
proletariat; all that was required was political power. 
How many a time did Marx and Engels declare such 
ideas to be dangerous Utopias, that could lead to 
nothing but demoralization and disaster ! Marx could 
not look upon them differently so long as he regarded 
his economic interpretation of history as the funda- 
mental proposition of his doctrine. No dictatorial de- 
crees of the victorious proletariat, no despotic meas- 
ures, no concentrated action of all the guillotines in 
the world could centralize the instruments of produc- 
tion. Socialism is possible ojily when in the course of 
economic development all production has become con- 



centra ted ^d s ocialized . Hence Marx affirms : " No 
social order ever disappears before all productive 
forces for which there is room in it have been devel- 
oped; and new higher relations of production never 
appear before the material conditions of their existence 
have matured in the womb of the old society." ^^ 
What then can the dictatorship of the proletariat ac- 
complish so long as production remains decentralized ? 
The fabrication of a plan for a socialist common- 
wealth, and its introduction through a successful over- 
throw, Marx regarded as Utopias, and he denounced 

^" Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy 
(Stone's translation), p. 12. 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 247 

the preaching of such doctrines as "" empty, con- 
scienceless play with propaganda." These are the 
words which Marx addressed to Weitling ! " and yet 
Marx was himself guilty of that for which he re- 
proached Weitling. 

Marx and Engels had learned a great deal from 
experience. The preface to the Commtmist Manifesto 
admitted that the Paris commune had taught them 
that " the working class cannot simply lay hold of 
the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its 
own purposes." ^^ 

There is no doubt whatever that the revolutionary 
element in Marx's writings was, even if unconsciously, 
taken over bodily from the older revolutionary social- 
ists like Blanqui. There is equally no doubt of its 
being in complete contradiction to the economic inter- 
pretation of history. A revolution could not create a 
socialist state; i t could proclaim it only if ec onomic 
develop ment h ad already created it. How then could 
so thorough a thinker as Marx be so persistently 
guilty of so glaring a contradiction in theory? 

"^^ " Tell us, Weitling, you who with your communistic propa- 
ganda have made so much noise in Germany, and have at- 
tracted so many laborers, . . . with what arguments do you 
defend your social revolutionary agitation, and upon what do you 
intend to base your agitation in the future? . . . To appeal in 
Germany to the workingmen without strictly scientific ideas and 
concrete doctrine is tantamount to an empty-headed and con- 
scienceless play with propaganda." Die Neue Zeit, vol. i (1883), 
P- 239. 

^^ Communist Manifesto, p. 10. 



248 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

I believe that the real explanation is in his '' dia- 
lectics," in his Hegelian logic, or rather in the dialectic 
process that among the Hegelians took the place of 
logic. It was a mode of thinking that proceeded only 
by revolutions, by negations of negations, by develop- 
ment through antitheses, by quantitative changes be- 
coming qualitative. Antagonism was the driving 
force. Development consisted in constant rebellion of 
elements, in a series of cataclysms. To Engels this 
dialectic method was a fetish. Note for example the 
way in which he summed up the economic tendencies : 
*•' The antagonism between socialized production and 
capitalist appropriation manifests itself as the antag- 
onism of proletariat and bourgeoisie ... it presents 
itself as an antagonism between the organization of 
production in the individual workshop and the an- 
archy of production in society generally. . . . When 
the economic collision has reached its apogee, you have 
the mode of production in rebellion against the mode 
of exchange, i.e., the crisis and finally the social revolu- 
tion." ^' 

This social revolution changes even the quality of 
the law of history. Economic and historical necessity 
is no more. " It is the ascent of man from the king- 
dom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom." ^* 
Translated into philosophical language, this means 
that causality ce ases! 

*' Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (1901), PP- 35, 38, 
42. '* Ibid., p. 53. 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 249 

This passage helps us to see how the economic inter- 
pretation of history was apparently reconciled with 
the revolutionary conception. The historical process 
is a process of constant change, because of its inner 
antagonisms, which grow till they overcome each other 
by force, forming new and higher elements which in 
their turn confront niew and growing antagonisms — 
and so on indefinitely. The greater the antagonism, 
the nearer is the revolution. Marx's belief therefore 
was : the worse the better. Llence his dislike for re- 
forms, for ameliorations that weaken antagonisms. 
The closing sentences in his speech on free trade strik- 
ingly illustrate this viewpoint. " Generally speaking," 
says Marx, '' the free trade system is destructive. It 
breaks up old nationalities and carries the antagonism 
between proletariat and bourgeoisie to the uttermost 
point. In a word, the system of commercial freedom 
hastens the social revolution. In this revolutionary 
sense alone, gentlemen, I am in favor of free trade." ^^ 
But with or without free trade, the revolution is inevi- 
table — and why? Because society is divided into an- 
tagonistic classes. " The antagonism between the pro- 
letariat and the bourgeoisie is a struggle between class 
and class, a struggle which, carried to its highest ex- 
pression, is a complete revolution." ^^ 

Orthodox Marxists adhere to the revolutionary and 

" Reprinted as appendix iii in the English edition of Marx's 
Poverty of Philosophy (London, 1900), p. 195. 
''Ibid., p. 159. 



250 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

cataclysmic doctrine. Kautsky, after giving us various 
analogies from natural history and depicting the act 
of birth as a revolution and catastrophe, ends by af- 
firming " that as each animal creature must at one 
time go through a catastrophe in order to reach a 
higher stage of development (the act of birth or the 
breaking of a shell), so society can only be raised to 
a higher stage of development through a catastro- 
phe." ^^ Dr. Luxemburg tells us that without the 
cataclysm of capitalism (i.e., the final crisis and social 
revolution) the expropriation of the capitalist class is 
impossible. The cataclysm, therefore, is the corner- 
stone of scient ific socia lism; with its removal there is 
n othing left_ of.,sfl£ialism/^ This is quite true, but it 
only proves that socialism, scientific or otherwise, has 
really no leg left to stand on. Let us examine its 
predicament. 

We have seen that the hoped-for universal crisis, the 
collapse of capitalist production, might as well be 
eliminated. The untenability of this theory is ad- 
mitted. The cataclysm is therefore reduced to the 
operation of the social revolution. Here again, how- 
ever, Marx becomes involved in no end of difficulties 



" Kautsky, The Social Revolution (Chicago, 1905), P- 20. 

^^ " As, however, the cataclysm of the bourgeois society is 
the cornerstone of scientific socialism, so the removal of this 
cornerstone would logically lead to the breakdown of the entire 
socialistic conception. . . . Without the collapse of capitalism 
the expropriation of the capitahst class is impossible." LuxeM' 
BURG, Sozialreform oder Revolution (Leipzig, 1899), p. 56. 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 251 

due to internal contradictions. The economic inter- 
pretation of history and the social revolution as an 
organizer of a new system of production cannot live 
together in the same house. The economic develop- 
ment is the foundation ; law, politics, ideologies are 
superstructures. The foundation cannot he changed 
by the superstructures; on the contrary, the latter 
have to adjust themselves to the basis. This economic 
foundation may present a socialized and absolutely 
concentrated mode of production; the superstructure 
— the old law — may then be adjusted to the new eco- 
nomic requirements. Marx told us that the tendencies 
of existing society lead inevitably to concentration, so- 
cialization, proletarization, etc., which are forming a 
new economic foundation and will therefore produce 
a new legal superstructure — a socialist commonwealth. 
But we have seen that Marx was mistaken in his view 
of tendencies. The economic foundation for a social- 
ist state does not exist, and there is no evidence that 
it ever will exist. On the other hand, revolutionary 
ideologies, bloody street fights, can never create a new 
economic basis. 

And now let us look into the contradictions of the 
so-called dialectics of Marx and Engels. Granted that 
there is nothing fixed, nothing constant but the con- 
stancy of change. Marx assumes this; yet he is con- 
stantly operating with logical concepts, which are in 
their very nature unchangeable, inflexible, permanent 
and constant, li a is a, it cannot he a -\- c or a — c. 



252 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

Yet in the historical process that presupposes constant 
change, a cannot remain the same a as it was at the 
start. To make this concrete: Marx is dealing with 
classes, tendencies, etc. But from his own viewpoint 
his classes cannot help changing in character. The 
same thing is true about all his concepts, whether they 
are " crisis," " capitalism," " concentration " or " revo- 
lution." Yet while the historical process is battering, 
changing or even destroying the inner content of all 
these concepts, the Marxian socialist operates with 
them as with absolute and unchanging entities and 
works out " scientifically," by negation of the nega- 
tion, our distant future ! ^^ 

Not only has time changed the meaning of the con- 
cepts with which Marx and Engels operated, but the 
authors of revolutionary socialism themselves under- 
went a change and admitted that history had con- 
victed them of error. Marx had little respect in his 
later years for Revolutionsspielerei; ^^ and Engels in 

^* Any one interested in the philosophical and logical aspects 
of the Marxian theory of development should not fail to read 
Peter von Struve, " Die Marxische Theorie der sozialen Ent- 
wicklung," in Braun's Archiv fur soziale Gesetsgehung und 
Statistik, vol. xiv (1899), pp. 658-704, where this line of 
thought is further developed. See also Hammacher, Das phi- 
losophisch-okonomische System des Marxismus (Leipzig, 1909), 
and Untermann, Die logischen Mangel des engeren Marxismus 
(Miinchen, 1910) ; Stammler, Wirtschaft und Recht, 2d ed. 
(Leipzig, 1906) ; and Masaryk, Die philosophischen und sosio- 
logischen Grundlagen des Marxismus (Wien, 1899). 

*** " The violent suppression of a revolution leaves behind in 
the minds of its participants, especially of those who have been 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 253 

1895 described his and Marx's early revolutionary 
conceptions as illusions, and admitted that history not 
only had proved them to be wrong, but also had 
changed all the conditions of class struggle. If the 
victory of the proletariat in street fights was of rare 
occurrence in the past, it has, under modern condi- 
tions, with the present military technique, with rail- 
roads and telegraphs, practically no chance whatever.^^ 
Thus even the last hope, the revolutionary hope, is laid 
at rest. 

driven into exile, a commotion which for more or less time 
incapacitates persons even of superior ability. They cannot keep 
pace with the march of events and do not wish to realize that 
the character of the social movement has changed. Hence that 
play in conspiracy and revolution which compromise both their 
instigators and the cause which they would serve." Marx, 
Nachwort su den Enthilllungen iiber den Kommunisten-ProBess 
zu Koln (Hottingen-Zurich, 1885), p. 72. Marx wrote the above 
sentences apropos of Willich, but the statement is true of Marx 
himself. 

^^ " History proved us wrong, and showed the views which 
we then held to be illusions. More than that, it not only de- 
stroyed our error of that time, but it also completely changed 
the conditions under which the proletariat was to struggle." 
Engels, Einleitung su Karl Marx's Die Klassenkdmpfe in 
Frankreich, 1848-1850 (Berlin, 1895), p. 6. "The irony of his- 
tory turns everything upside down. We the ' revolutionaries ' 
thrive much better by legal means than by illegal ones and 
through ' revolution.' " Ibid., p. 17. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE COLLAPSE OF MARX'S THEORY OF 

VALUE 

In the first part of the present study it was pointed 
out that, whatever role Marx's theory of value may 
have played in his economic system, his socialism was 
not based upon that theory but rather upon the inevita- 
ble development of economic tendencies. Accordingly, 
as long as the relation of Marx to socialism was the 
primary object of our inquiry, to discuss at the outset 
his theory of value would have been to confuse the 
issue. Having disposed of the economic tendencies 
that were to lead to socialism, we can now consider 
what socialism stands to gain from this particular 
theory. 

In a sense, any such consideration is rather super- 
fluous. There are few theories that have been so 
carefully examined, so thoroughly sifted, and so com- 
pletely condemned upon their own documentary evi- 
dence as Marx's theory of value. And since the ap- 
pearance of the thirdj^zxil iime of CapitaL we have in 
our hands what may be called a^signed-^oottfesdoiLof^ 
Marx and Engels to the effect that this theory is a 
futile constructkiru— 
"^ 254 



COLLAPSE OF THEORY OF VALUE 255 

What was this famous theory of value? The so- 
cially necessary amount of labor-time in corpor ated 
in the production of a ^ommodity. we were^ told^ js 
what cons titutes its value. But if, for example, an 
Indian builds a canoe and exchanges it for a dog that 
never fails on a deer hunt, would Marx's law of value 
govern the exchange of the dog for the canoe? Not 
at all. Marx is investigating capitalist production, 
the production of commodities for the market, and 
the economic laws peculiar to that mode of production 
— ^peculiar, that is, to modern times. From the very 
start it was a distinctive feature of Marx's economic 
theory— a feature not shared by him with his classical 
predecessors — that universal abstract economic laws 
do not exist; rather does every historical period have 
laws of its own.^ Historically, therefore, the operative 
power of Marx's law of value was limited to the 



] 



* Marx, Capital, vol. i (English translation, 1891), p. xxviii. 
Cf. DiEHL, Sozialwissenschaftliche Erlduterungen zu David 
Ricardos Grundsdtzen der Volkswirtschaft, p. 97 : " In contra- 
distinction to Ricardo, Marx brought forward his law of value 
only for a definite phase of economic Hfe, or to express it dif- 
ferently, for Marx the law of value had only a historic meaning, 
while for Ricardo it had a general one. Wherever men worked, 
Ricardo believed, they also bartered for the value of their work. 
Therefore the law of value was for Ricardo a general permanent 
law for all kinds and periods of economic life. Marx thought 
quite differently; he acknowledged no universal law of econom- 
ics, but only laws applying to definite conditions of production. 
The law of value was only to hold for the period of production 
of commodities, and so had no validity for objects of personal 
consumption, as Ricardo thought, but only for the commodi- 
ties." 



2c,6 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

modern period of capitalist production. It did not 
apply to wares that were subject to accidental ex- 
change, but only to wares produced by hired labor for 
sale in the market. This historical limitation imposed 
by Marx upon his law of value the reader should 
bear in mind. 

What proof does Marx offer that the labor-time 
congealed in the commodity is what constitutes its 
value? This very concrete law of value, which is his- 
torically circumscribed and limited, is not proven to 
us by equally limited and circumscribed concrete his- 
torical observations, but by abstract reasoning sub 
specie ceternitatis. We may say that literally Marx 
is rushing in where Aristotle feared to tread. Aris- 
totle wondered considerably about exchange. He rea- 
soned : 5 beds = so- much money is the same as 5 
beds = I house. Hence the value of every commodity 
can be expressed in terms of some other commodity 
taken at random. But " exchange cannot take place 
without equality, and equality not without commen- 
surability." Aristotle wondered how things so obvi- 
ously different as commodities may be can be com- 
mensurable. He decided that they cannot be quali- 
tatively commensurable. Hence the equalization that 
exchange may establish is but " a makeshift for prac- 
tical purposes." ^ 

The logical problem thus abandoned by the master 
himself, Marx undertook to solve twenty-odd hundred 

^ Capital, vol. i, p. 28. 



COLLAPSE OF THEORY OF VALUE 257 

years later in the spirit of the Aristotelian scholastic.^ 
He begins with a random equation: one quarter of 
corn = X hundredweight of iron. '' What does this 
equation tell us ? It tells us that in two different things 
— in I quarter of corn and in x cwt. of iron — there 
exists in equal quantities something common to both. 
The two things must therefore be equal to a third, 
which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each 
of them, so far as it is exchange value, must therefore 
be reduced to this third." * 

This reasoning is interesting. Having thus con- 
vinced himself that every exchange equation of two 
commodities is in reality a sublimated menage a trois, 
Marx argues as follows : " This common something 
cannot be either a geometrical, a chemical, or any 
other natural property of commodities. Such prop- 
erties claim our attention only in so far as they affect 
the utility of those commodities, make them use- 
values. But the exchange of a commodity is evidently 
an act characterized by a total abstraction from its use- 

^ I do not wish to be understood as speaking lightly of either 
Aristotle or the master-minds of the scholastic. I readily grant 
that no one in modern times has equaled them in logic. But 
the reason why they became such artists in the use of the 
syllogism was because it was the sole instrument at their dis- 
posal. The chaos of facts and the order of tabulated experience 
was not theirs to deal with. Hence theirs were complete and 
perfect natural philosophies, while to us was given a natural 
science in all its incompleteness and imperfection. Our several 
economic theories, alas, are still quite logical, quite complete and 
quite perfect. 

* Capital^ vol. i, pp. 3, 4. * 



258 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

value. As use- values, commodities are,_above all, of 
different qualities, but as exchange values they are 
merely different quantities, and conseq uently jo not 
contain an atom of use-value. If then we leave out 
of consideration the use-value of commodities, they 
have only one common property left, that of being 
products of labor. . . . There is nothing left but 
what is common to them all; all are reduced to one 
and the same sort of labor, human labor in the ab- 
stract. Let us now consider the residue of each of 
these products; it consists of the same unsubstantial 
reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous 
human labor, of labor-power expended without regard 
to the mode of its expenditure. All that these things 
now tell us is that human labor is embodied in them. 
When looked at as crystals of this social substance, 
common to them all, they are values/' ^ 

Thus we see that Marx is dealing with economic 
phenomena as a mediaeval scholastic, and as such he 
is not only solving the economic problem of value but 
is also answering the metaphysical query after the 
substance of all things. Our nineteenth-century ma- 
terialist in the garb of a thirteenth-century schoolman 
shows us in a dim metaphysical light the true 
noumenon of all phenomena. 

A critique of this method of reasoning would have 
been called for had Marx offered us a theory of value 
as a mental construction, a Hulfshegriff ; but he is pre- 

' Ihid., vol. i, pp. 4, 5, 



COLLAPSE OF THEORY OF VALUE 259 

senting us not with a theory of valu e but with a law 
of value, a law governing the exchanged f commodi- 
ties. Owing to the concrete nature of this law, it is 
a simple matter to test its validity. The question is : 
Is or is not this law of value operative in actual 
practice ? 

Marx informs us that the price is but the money 
expression of value. " The expression of the value of 
a commodity in gold," he tells us, " is its money-form 
or price." ® The law of value that governs these prices 
Marx compares with the law of gravity. " In the 
midst of all the accidental and ever-fluctuating ex- 
change relations between the products, the labor-time 
socially necessary for their production forcibly asserts 
itself like an overriding law of nature. The law of 
gravity thus asserts itself when a house falls about 
our ears." '^ It is important to notice that this state- 
ment is reiterated in the third volume. '' Whatever 
may be the way in which the prices of the various 
commodities are first fixed or mutually regulated, the 
law of value always dominates their movements. If 
the labor-time required for the production of these 
commodities is reduced, prices fall; if it is increased, 
prices rise, other circumstances remaining the same." ^ 
The law of value always determines the prices.^ In 
fact, to use Marx's own expression, *' a price which is 
different in quality from value is an absurd contra- 

* Ihid., vol. i, p. 66. ^ Ibid., vol. iii, p. 208. 

^ Ibid., vol. i, p. 46. • ® Ibid., vol. iii, p. 244. 



26o MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

diction." ^^ " The concept of price really signifies the 
value of some use-value expressed in money." ^^ 
These and similar plain assertions make the problem of 
testing the Marxian theory of value relatively simple. 
But before we inquire whether his law stands the test, 
let us proceed to the second and perhaps more original 
part of the theory. 

The capitalist, the owner of money, must buy com- 
modities at their value, and then he must sell them 
at their value, yet at the end of the process he must 
draw out more money than he put in. How is this 
problem to be solved? How is pro fit made ? This 
question is answered as follows: there is one com- 



modity, labor-power, which is purchased on the market 



like all other commodities at its value,, but the cap- 
italist extracts from it surplus value^ 

In order that labor-power may be freely offered on 
the market, the owner of this commodity, the laboring 
man, must be a free man, who may dispose at will of 
his labor-power, i.e., his person. The second historical 
condition for the existence of labor-power as a com- 
modity is the existence of a proletariat class,, that is 
of people that possess labor-power, but none of the 
means and instruments of production; or, as Marx 
puts it : " The second essential condition to the owner 
finding labor-power on the market as a commodity is 
this — that the laborer, instead of being in the position 
to sell commodities in which his labor is incorporated, 

^^ Ibid., vol. iii, p. 417. "^^ Ibid., vol. iii, p. 417. 



COLLAPSE OF THEORY OF VALUE 261 

must be obliged to offer for sale as a commodity that 
very labor-power which exists only in his living self." ^^ 
Now if the capitalist pays on the market the value 
of labor-power, what is the value of this curious com- 
modity, and how is it to be determined? Marx an- 
swers as follows : '' The value of labor-power is deter- 
mined as in the case of every other commodity by 
the labor-time necessary for production of this special 
article. Labor-power exists only as a capacity or 
power of the living individual. . . . For his main- 
tenance he requires a given quantity of the means of 
subsistence. Therefore the labor-time requisite for 
the production of labor-power reduces itself to that 
necessary for the production of those means of sub- 
sistence; in other words, the value o f labor-power is 

«— IM— Kill ' " ' " 

the value of the means of subsistence necessary for 
the maintenance of the laborer.'' ^ ^ 

Parenthetically, the reader is urged to keep in mind 
that Marx is here presenting us with a cost-of-sub- 
sistence theoryjoijwages^ 

The value of labor-power thus resolves itself into 
the value of a definite quantity of means of subsist- 
ence. It therefore varies with the value of these 
means or with the quantity of labor requisite for 
their production.^* Let us assume that the value of 
labor-power, thus determined, is three shillings a day, 
which three shillings the capitalist pays his laborer 

" Ibid., vol. i, p. 147. " Ibid., vol. i, p. 149. 

^* Ibid., vol. i, p. 151. 



262 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

for his labor-power. But, argues Marx, if the cap- 
itahst should make the laborer work only as many 
working hours as are necessary to the production of 
the labor-power he has purchased — let us say four or 
five or six hours — no surplus would arise. The four 
or six hours of work, as the case may be, would not 
contribute to the finished product of the laborer a 
value greater than that of the three shillings which 
the capitalist has paid in wages. No profitable busi- 
ness could be carried on in this way; hence, according 
to Marx, while the capitalist pays to the laborer the 
three shillings, which is equivalent, let us say, to six 
hours of labor, he makes the laborer work the whole 
day — let us say, twelve hours. Thus the laborer pro- 
duces not only the three shillings which he has re- 
ceived in wages, but an additional three or more 
shillings, which is surplus value for the capitalist. 

From the viewpoint of the capitalist, however, the 
surplus value thus produced by the laborer is by no 
^means clear profit for the employer. 

Production requires capital. Capital engaged in 
production Marx divides into constant and variable 
capital. Constant capital is that part of the capital 
that is invested in the means of producti on — building 
machinery, material, etc. — which produces as such no_ 
s t ^plns ^^^ Ine- Variable capital is capital i nvested in 
the purchase of labor-powex* in hiring workmen. Only 
this portion of capital is productiv e of sur pl us value.> 

If a certain productive enterprise requires £410 of 



COLLAPSE OF THEORY OF VALUE 263 

constant capital and £90 of variable capital, and the 
rate of surplus value on the variable capital is 100 
per cent or £90, the capitalist is receiving £90 of sur- 
plus value on a total investment of £410 + £90 = 
£500, or 18 per cent. If, on the other hand, the 
branch of industry is one in which the value of the 
implements and material used is slight, if the constant 
capital used is but £10 and the variable capital £90, 
and if the surplus value is again £90, then the rate of 
surplus value is the same, 100 per cent, but the rate of 
profit to the capitalist on his whole investment of £100 
is 90 per cent. 

It is therefore evident that in various industries, 
in which the rate of surplus value is the same, the rate 
of profit will vary in accordance with the composition 
of the capital concerned, in accordance with the ratio 
of constant capital to the variable capital employed. 
^-The higher the ratio of variable capital, the higher 
will be the rate of profit; and, vice versa, the higher 
the ratio of constant capital, the lower will be the rate 
of profit. In industries which require little or no ma- 
chinery and raw material of slight value, together with 
a great deal of human labor-power, the rate of profit 
will be very high. On the other hand, the larger the 
investment in machinery and material, the slighter the 
proportion of labor-power used^ the smaller will be the 
profit; since it is only from living human labor that 
surplus value can be derived. 

If the Marxian theory is true, industries resting 



264 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

primarily on human labor must produce a proportion- 
ately higher rate of profit than enterprises in which 
the ratio of constant capital is high. Yet Marx him- 
self admits that experience shows the rate of profit 
in the various industries to be entirely independent 
of the inner composition of capital employed in these 
various industries. A railroad which represents an 
enormous investment of constant capital and a rela- 
tively slight proportion of variable capital may give 
the same rate of profit as a district messenger com- 
pany or any other enterprise in which the largest 
amount of capital is spent on wages. In fact there 
is a general tendency to an average rate of p rofit. 
'Thls~tendency is admitted byTvlarx. But if an aver- 
age rate of profit be admitted, how can it be claimed 
that the Marxian law of value is to operate like the 
law of gravity? On the face of it this admission 
seems to invalid ate the whole theory of value. 

This was the puzzle that Marx promised to solve. 
Attention was drawn to the difficulty by Engels him- 
self, in 1885, in the preface to the second volume of 
Capital, in which he challenged the economists to 
solve the problem how " an equal average rate of profit 
can and must come about, not only without a violation 
of the law of value, but by means of it." ^^ That was 

^^ " According to the Ricardian law two investments making 
use of the same amount of labor, and paying it at the same 
rate, all other conditions being equal, will produce in equal 
periods of time products of equal value, and likewise an equal 
surplus value on an equal rate of profit. If, however, they 



COLLAPSE OF THEORY OF VALUE 265 

the Chinese puzzle, the solution of which was adver- 
tised to appear in the third volume of Capital. 

The third volume finally appeared. It is a most 
important document, because it forever disposed of 
the famous exploitation theory of value. It is a 
signed admission that the theory is worthless. Not 
only is Marx compelled to abandon it, but the way in 
which he does it is forced and graceless; he shifts his 
ground and abandons in all haste not only his theory 
of value, which is untenable, but also his historical 
method, which would have ensured even to his failure 
the renown of a great attempt. Professor Loria 
asked, after reading this third volume of Capital, if 
there ever was a more complete rediictio ad ahsurdiim, 
a greater theoretical bankruptcy, or if a scientific sui- 
cide was ever committed with greater pomp and 
solemnity. 

Marx's law of value of the capitalist mode of pro- 
make use of unequal amounts of labor, they cannot produce 
equal amounts of surplus value or of profit, as a Ricardian 
would call it. The opposite, however, is the case. As a matter 
of fact, equal investments produce, regardless of how much or 
how little wage labor they employ, equal average profits in equal 
periods of time. Herein lies, therefore, a contradiction to the 
law of value which Ricardo himself discovered, and which his 
school was unable to explain. . . . The economists who are 
anxious to discover in Rodbertus the secret source and a 
philosophical forerunner of Marx have here an opportunity to 
show what Rodbertian philosophy can accomplish. If they prove 
how an equal average rate of profit can and must come about, 
not only without a violation of the law of value, but by means 
of it, then we can hold further converse with each other." 
Marx, Kapital, vol. ii (Hamburg, 1893), p. xxii. 



266 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

duction, which in the first volume was presented as 
a natural law, like the law of gravity, is nullified in 
the third volume by capitalist competition. The cap- 
italist does not care for the organic composition of his 
capital investment. It is immaterial to him whether 
he has invested £90 in constant capital and £10 in 
variable capital, or whether his capital investment is 
composed of £10 constant + £90 variable capital. In 
either case he has invested £100, and upon the sum 
total of his investment he expects a return. Different 
as the organic compositions of the various capital 
investments may be, '' a difference in the average rate 
of profit in the various lines of industry does not 
exist in reality, and could not exist without abolishing 
the entire system of capitalist production." ^® Appar- 
ently, then, the theory of value is irreconcilable at 
this point with the actual process, irreconcilable with 
the real phenomena of production, so that we must 
give up the attempt to understand these phenomena. 
In the first part of this volume it is admitted that the 
cost prices are the same for products of different 
spheres of production, in which equal portions of cap- 
ital have been invested for purposes of production, 
regardless of the variable composition of such capitals. 

^® It was with a theoretical analysis of capitalist production 
alone that Marx dealt in his Capital, and the "laws" he pro- 
mulgated were to be laws of capitalist production. Cf. Capital, 
vol. i, pp. xxviii, 146, 147. It should be noted that the subtitle 
of the authorized English translation of the book is "A critical 
analysis of capitalist production." 



COLLAPSE OF THEORY OF VALUE 267 

The cost price does not show any distinction between 
variable and constant capital as regards the return to 
the capitalist. A commodity for which he must ad- 
vance f 100 in production costs him the same amount, 
whether he invests £90 c. + £10 v., or £10 c. + £90 v. 
He always spends £100 for it, no more, no less. The 
cost prices are the same for investments of the same 
amounts of capital in different spheres, no matter how 
much the produced values and surplus values may 
differ. The equality of cost prices is the basis for the 
competition of the invested capitals, by which an aver- 
age rate of profit is brought about. ^^ 

This is a formal retreat to the classical cost-of- 
production theory of value. The statement that the 
price is but the money expression of value and the 
assertion that commodities exchange according to their 
values are simply dropped. Instead, we are told that 
in reality the averag e rate of pr ofit on Jhe entirj£^cQst~ 
of productio n is rn aintained regardless o f the so-called 
organic compositio n of capit al. In reality, therefore, 
the commodities are sold either above or below their 
value. 

""^Some economists, after hearing of the final solution 
of Marx's value problem, called the whole Marxian 
construction a mystification. After the much-heralded 
new natural law — his own law of value — we are told 
in the third volume that the pr ^ has no thing to do 
wnth value. _" The price of production of a commodity, 

^^ Capital, vol. iii, pp. 181, 182. 



268 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

then, is equal to its cost price^lus^a pe rcentag e of 
profit japportioned according to the average rate of 
profit, or, in other words, equal to its cost-price plus 
the average profit." ^^ 

If the value of the product does not regulate the 
price of the product, if the profit of the capitalist is 
not determined by the surplus value extracted by him 
but by the average rate of profit that he gets on the 
sum total of the cost of production, then the first 
volume of Capital might as well never have been writ- 
ten. The reader might have been spared all the near- 
Aristotelian metaphysical chase after the tertimn com- 
parationis, that is defined as neither one thing nor 
another, but as an unsubstance, as a jelly (Caller te) 
of human labor, and as ruling all exchange and estab- 
lishing all equations under the name of value. Marx 
affirmed that his law of value was a working law; 
it did not prove to be so, and he admitted it; but 
the blame he put not upon the law he had discovered, 
but upon the perversity of mankind, who act without 
any understanding for the innermost meaning of 
things as revealed by Marx. " If it is realized — and 
the reader will have realized it to his great dismay — 
that the analysis of the actual internal interconnections 
of the capitalist process of production is a very com- 
plicated matter and a very protracted work; if it is 
a work of science to resolve the visible and external 
movement into the internal actual movements, then it 
" Ibid., vol. iii, p. i86. 



COLLAPSE OF THEORY OF VALUE 269 

is understood, as a matter of course, that the concep- 
tions formed about the laws of production and cir- 
culation will differ widely from these real laws and 
will be merely the conscious expression of the apparent 
movements. The conceptions of a merchant, a stock- 
gambler, a banker, are necessarily quite perverted. 
Those of the manufacturer are vitiated by the acts of 
circulation, to which their capital is subject, and by 
the compensation of the general rate of profit." ^^ 

How then, one would ask, does Marx reconcile his 
law of value with the above admissions? 

He tells us that if we take the sum of all capital 
investments in their aggregate as one product, then 
the product in its aggregate, and only in its aggregate, 
will sell exactly at its value. But the products of a 
single capitalistic enterprise do not sell at their values. 
Why not? Because, says Marx, — " if the commodities 
are sold at their value, then, as we have shown, con- 
siderably different rates of profit arise in the various 
spheres of production, according to the different or- 
ganic composition of the masses of capital invested 
in them. But capital withdraws from spheres with 
low rate of profit and invades others which yield a 
higher rate. By means of this incessant emigration 
and immigration, in one word, by its distribution 
among the various spheres in accord with a rise of 
the rate profit here, and its fall there, it brmgs about 
such a proportion of supply to demand that the average 
" Ibid., vol. iii, p. 369. 



270 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

profit in the various spheres of production becomes the 
same, so that values are converted into prices of pro- 
duction.^** 

Does the reader realize what Marx has proved by 
this statement? Squarely and clearly and forcibly 
Marx states here, and proves it to us, that commodities 
exchange not in proportion to the labor they^contain.. 



In other words, the theory of value as originally 
formulated by Marx is false. But, we are told, the sum 
of the prices of all production is equal to the sum of 
their values. This statement has no meaning whatso- 
ever, because the sole raison d'etre of a theory of 
value is to explain to us the relS^ns^MZpraQ^ortp 
of exchange,^ The idea that the totality of all produc- 
tion is equal to the sum total of all products is not 
exactly adapted to revolutionize the thinking world. 
Let me quote Bohm-Bawerk's reply to this statement 

of Marx : " "* "^ '*■' — 

" There can clearly only be a question of an ex- 
change relation between different separate commodi- 
ties among each other. As soon, however, as one looks 
at all commodities as a whole and sums up the prices, 
one must studiously and of necessity avoid looking at 
the relations existing inside of this whole. The in- 
ternal relative differences of price do compensate each 
other in the sum total. For instance, what the tea is 
worth more than the iron, the iron is worth less than 
tea and vice versa. In any case, when we ask for 

^^ Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 230, 231. 



COLLAPSE OF THEORY OF VALUE 271 

information regarding the exchange of commodities 
in poHtical economy, it is no answer to our question 
to be told the total price which they fetch when taken 
all together, any more than if, on asking by how many 
fewer minutes the winner in a prize race had covered 
the course than his competitor, we were to be told 
that all the competitors together had taken twenty-five 
minutes and thirteen seconds. 

" The state of the case is this : To the question of the 
problem of value the followers of Marx reply first with 
their law of value, i.e., that commodities exchange in 
proportion to the working time incorporated in them. 
Then they — covertly or openly — revoke this answer in / ^ 
Its relation to the domain of the exchange of separate L^ 
commodities, the one domain in which the problem has 
any meaning, and maintain it in full force only for 
the whole aggregate national produce, for a domain 
therefore in which the problem, being without object, f y- 
could not have been put at all. As an answer to the 
strict question of the problem of value, the law of 
value is avowedly contradicted by the facts, and in 
the only application in which it is not contradicted by 
them it is no longer an answer to the question which 
demanded a solution, but could at best only be an 
answer to some other question. 

'' It is, however, not even an answer to another 
question ; it is no answer at all ; it is simple tautology. 
For, as every economist knows, commodities do event- 
ually exchange with commodities — when one pene- 



272 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

trates the disguises due to the use of money. Every 
commodity which comes into exchange is at one and 
the same time a commodity and the price of what is 
given in exchange for it. The aggregate of com- 
modities, therefore, is identical with the aggregate 
of the prices paid for them ; or, the price of the whole 
national produce is nothing else than the national prod- 
uce itself. Under these circumstances, therefore, it 
is quite true that the total price paid for the entire 
national produce coincides exactly with the total 
amount of value or labor incorporated in it. But this 
tautological declaration denotes no increase of true 
knowledge, neither does it serve as a special test of the 
correctness of the alleged law that commodities ex- 
change in proportion to the labor embodied in them. 
For in this manner one might as well, or rather as 
unjustly, verify any other law one pleased — the law, 
for instance, that commodities exchange according to 
the measure of their specific gravity. For if certainly 
as a "separate ware " i lb. of gold does not exchange 
with 1 lb. of iron, but with 40,000 lbs. of iron; still, 
the total price paid for i lb. of gold and 40,000 lbs. 
of iron taken together is nothing more and nothing 
less than 40,000 lbs. of iron and i lb. of gold. The 
total weight, therefore, of the total price — 40,001 lbs. 
— corresponds exactly to the like total weight of 
40,001 lbs. incorporated in the whole of the com- 
modities. Is weight consequently the true standard 



COLLAPSE OF THEORY OF VALUE 273 

by which the exchange relation of commodities is de- 
termined ? " ^^ 

How fundamentally untenable Marx's theory is, is 
shown by Engels's desire to shift the historical setting 
of the whole proposition. Such an attempt is already 
suggested by Marx himself in his third volume of 
Capital. ^^ Engels takes up Marx's suggestion and in- 
forms us th at Marx's law of value was generall y valid 
economically from the beginning of all recorded his- 



tory downtothe fifteenth century.^^ For thousands 
of years commodities exchanged m the ratio of the 
labor value they contained, even if they do not ex- 
change so now. This period extended, according 
to Engels, anywhere from five to seven thousand 
years, but, ended some five centuries ago,! This ex- 



planation is pathetic. *^arx defi nitely and crispl v in- 



fnrmpd^s^that big law ay^<^ valid nn]j7_for the cap- 
itali st mode of product ion, for the period of the manu- 

^^ Bohm-Bawerk, Karl Marx and the Close of His System 
(New York, 1898), pp. 72-75. 

^^ Capital, vol. iii, p. 156. 

^' " Marx's law of value was therefore generally valid eco- 
nomically from the beginning of the period that through ex- 
change turned products into commodities down to the fifteenth 
century of our era. The exchange of commodities, however/ 
dates from a time anterior to all written records, stretching 
back in Egypt to a period at least 2,500 and perhaps 5,000 years, 
and in Babylon 4,000 and perhaps 6,000 years B.C. : the law of 
value has therefore been in force for a period of from 5,000 to 
7,000 years." Fr. Engels, Letzte Arbeit: Erg'dnzung und 
Nachtrag sum dritten Buch des "Kapital": Die Neue Zeit, 
Jahrg. XIV, 1896, vol. i, p. 39. 



274 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

facture of commodities for the ^lighly developed 
market, where exchange is not accidental^ and is im- 
personal. ^* Furthermore this period was limited to 
those times in which there has been a free proletariat 
class — free as to their persons, equal to their em- 
ployer before the law, but having for sale no other 
commodity but their labor-power. Or, as Marx puts 
it, — " Labor-power can appear upon the market as a 
commodity only if, and so far as, its possessor, the 
individual, whose labor-power it is, offers it for sale, 
or sells it, as a commodity. In order that he may 
be able to do this, he must have at his disposal, must 
be the untrammeled owner of, his capacity for labor, 
i.e., of his person. He and the owner of money meet 
in the market and deal with each other on the basis 
of equal rights, with this difference alone, the one is 
buyer, the other is seller; both therefore equal in the 
eves of the law." ^^ Marx's entire theory is thus an 
analysis of capitalist prod uction ; and now, when th e 
collapse of his law of value is too obvious to be dis- 
cussed, we are tol d that if the la w is not true for 
capi talist production it was nevertheless tru e for .the 
period precedin g the fifteenth century, i.e ., for the 
periods of domestic economy, of barbar i^i^^^ slavery, 
of serfdom — in short, for any period_exce pt the one 
where, in Marx's sc heme, it wou ld have,, had some 
meaning and importance. 

'* Capital, vol. iii, p. 209. Cf. supra, p. 255. 
'^ Ihid., vol. i, p. 146 ; item. 



COLLAPSE OF THEORY OF VALUE 275 

At first glance it may look as if Marx faced the 
debacle only when he tried to solve the problem of 
the average rate of profit in his third volume of Cap- 
ital. A close examination will show, however, that he 
was quite aware of the situation while writing his 
first volume. The collapse of his law of value is al- 
ready there. Only look at his theory of wages. 
Marx tells us that labor-power is a commodity and its 
value is determined like that of any other commodity: 
" The value of labor-power is determined, as in the 
case of every other commodity, by the labor-time neces- 
sary for the production, and consequently also the 
reproduction, of this special article. So far as it has 
value, it represents no more than a definite quantity 
of the average labor of society incorporated in it. 
Labor-power exists only as a capacity, or power of 
the living individual. Its production consequently pre- 
supposes his existence. Given the individual, the pro- 
duction of labor-power consists in his reproduction of 
himself or his maintenance. For his maintenance he 
requires a given quantity of the means of subsistence. 
Therefore the labor-time requisite for the production 
of labor-power reduces itself to that necessary for the 
production of those means of subsistence; in other 
words, the value of labor-power is the value of the 
means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of 
the laborer." ^^ This is a clear-cut statement of the 
cost-of-subsistence theory of wages and is quite in ac- 
^® Ibid., vol. i, p. 149. 



2^6 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

cord with Marx's value theory. But is this the theory 
of wages that Marx maintains? Not at all. He de- 
clares himself a strenuous opponent of the iron law 
of wages, as we have pointed out in a preceding sec- 
tion of the present study.^'^ The cost-of -maintenance 
theory is quite abandoned in his final reserve-army and 
increasing-misery theory of wages. At times the price 
of labor-power is much above the cost of maintenance, 
only too often much below that cost, but " in propor- 
tion as capital accumulates, the lot of the laborer, be 
his payment high or low, must grow worse." ^^ Under 
no circumstances does Marx's law of value regulate 
the price of the commodity of labor-power. It is 
regulated, according to time, by the competition of 
the reserve army of the unemployed with those em- 
ployed. And this reserve army of unemployed, this 
relative surplus population, is created by machinery, 
the " labor-saving " device invariably called in by cap- 
ital as soon as the margin of surplus value pressed out 
by the capitalist becomes narrow.^^ 

So here again prices are regulated not by the law of 
value but quite independently of that law. Thus we 

" See note on pp. 99-100 and pp. 111-119. 

^^ Capital, vol. i, p. 661. 

^^ For additional substantiation of the conflict between Marx^s 
law of value and his theory of wages, cf. the extremely just 
and learned study of Diehl, " Ueber das Verhaltnis von Wert 
und Preis im okonomischen System von Karl Marx," in the 
Festschrift sur Feier des 25-idhrigen Bestehens des staats- 
wissenschaftlichen Seminars in Halle (Jena, 1898), especially 
chapter iv : " Wert und Preis der Arbeitskraft." 



COLLAPSE OF THEORY OF VALUE 2^^ 

see that the so-called great central doctrine — the law 
of value — is but a bubble, admittedly without any 
validity in concrete economic experience and even 
without continuous cohesion as a mental construction. 
If the reader so chooses, he may disregard all hostile 
criticisms of the theory. All he has to do is to follow 
Marx, and he will arrive at the complete destruction 
of Marx's own central doctrine. 



CHAPTER XIII 

MARX'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS ETERNAL 
JUSTICE. CONCLUDING REMARKS 

Marx's theory of value came to grief/ But let us 
assume for argument's sake that this law of value is 
as valid as the law of gravitation. What does social- 
ism stand to gain from such an assumption? If the 
law of value is true, then all accumulated capital is 

^ Marx, as a mere youngster, in discussing Szeliga's mysteries 
of speculative construction, ridiculed in advance the logical con- 
struction of his own future theory of value. He had not then 
written about an unsubstantial reality of things or about com- 
modities as a jelly of abstract human labor, but he might almost 
have been discussing the mysteries of his own theory of surplus 
value when he wrote: "If from real apples, pears, straw- 
berries, almonds, I form the general idea ' fruit,' and if I go 
further and imagine that my abstract idea, derived from the 
concrete fruit, has an existence outside of myself, is, indeed, the 
real existence of the pear, apple, etc., then I postulate the 
speculative ' fruit ' as the ' substance ' of the pear, the apple, the 
almond, etc. I state, therefore, that it is non-essential for the 
pear to be a pear or the apple to be an apple. What is essential 
to these objects is not their real existence which is evident to 
the senses, but the generalization that I have made of them, the 
essence of my own conception * fruit,' by which name I called 
their substance. I then proclaim that the apple, the pear, the 
almond, etc., are merely states or 'modi' of the * fruit.' . . ." 
Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, Die heilige Familie oder 
Kritik der kritischen Kritik: Gegen Bruno Bauer und Con- 
sort en (Frankfurt a. M., 1845), p. 79; reprinted in Literarischef 
Nachlass, vol. ii, p. 156. 

278 



CONCLUDING REMARKS 279 

an accumulation of unpaid labor, then all profit is but 
realized exploitation, then the character and meaning 
of wage slavery is fully explained. Then the injustice 
of the capitalist mode of production is so palpable and 
so appalling that the abolition of private ownership 
-of means of production is a moral necessity. This is 
precisely what is being said now by so many socialists. 
This is precisely what has been said in the past; and 
it is precisely this attitude of mind that led Marx to 
differentiate himself from his socialist forerunners and 
to preach a system of his own. The most original 
and most lasting contribution of his was his conception 
of economic necessity. " Justice, Humanity, Liberty, 
etc., may have called a thousand times for this or for 
that, but if it is impossible, it will never be realized and 
will remain but an empty dream." ^ For empty dreams 
he had little respect; and as such dreams he regarded 
all humanitarian and Utopian socialism and all social 
reform. " These gentlemen," he said, " hate think- 
ing, heartless thinking, as they hate struggle and de- 
velopment. As if any thinker, Hegel and Ricardo not 
excluded, had ever been so heartless as to slop over 
our heads such soft-mouthed slobber." ^ The reader 
can find many such sentiments expressed by Marx 
about his idealistic contemporaries.* 

^ Literarischer Nachlass, vol. iii, p. 249. 

' Ibid., vol. iii, p. 476. 

* See for instance what he had to say about the early New 
York socialist, Hermann Kriege. Literarischer Nachlass, vol. ii, 
pp. 415, 416. 



28o MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

Even real slavery Marx regarded as a necessity, 
under given economic conditions. He was by no 
means an abolitionist. So he wrote in 1847: " With- 
out slavery you have no cotton, without cotton you 
cannot have modern industry. It is slavery which has 
given their value to the colonies, it is the colonies 
which have created the commerce of the world, it is 
the commerce of the world which is the essential condi- 
tion of great industry." ^ Several years later we find 
him repeating the same argument, and also explaining 
under what conditions he expected the disappearance 
of slavery. 

" This fact, however, goes straight back to the only 
possible and practical solution of the slave question, 
that again has caused so many long debates in Con- 
gress. Cotton production in America rests upon 
slavery. As soon as the industry has reached such a 
development that it refuses to put up with the Amer- 
ican monopoly of cotton, just so soon will the produc- 
tion of cotton in large quantities be a success in other 
lands, and practically everywhere at the present time 
this can be done only through free labor. But as soon 
as free labor in other lands produces cotton as ex- 
tensively and as cheaply as slave labor in the United 
States, the American monopoly of cotton and Amer- 
ican slavery will together be broken, and the slaves 
will be emancipated because they have become useless 
as slaves. Similarly will wage labor in Europe be 

^ The Poverty of Philosophy (1900), p. 90. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS 281 

done away with as soon as it has become not only an 
unnecessary part of production but even a fetter upon 
it." « 

We are dependent upon our industry, Marx ex- 
plained, and we are not in a position to dictate hu- 
manitarian conditions upon which production is to 
rest. As a revolutionary socialist he argued at times 
like Nassau Senior. He was, as a matter of fact, 
against the ten-hour bill, because he feared that the 
famous factory act might cripple British industry. So 
we read : '' The whole social development of England 
is part and parcel of the development and progress 
of industry. All institutions that stop this progress, 
or limit it, or regulate it according to external plans, 
are reactionary, impossible, and have to succumb. 
The revolutionary forces that so easily had their way 
with the whole patriarchal society of England, with 
the landed aristocracy, and with the financial aristoc- 
racy, will surely not let themselves be hemmed within 
the limits of the ten-hour bill." "^ 

Marx in course of time changed his hostile attitude 
toward the factory acts and toward labor legislation 
in general, as his inaugural address before the Inter- 
national in 1864 plainly indicates; but his attitude to- 
wards the *' demand for justice " remained the same. 
When, in 1875, the German social democracy adopted 
a program in which it based its demands upon " just 

* Literarischer Nachlass, vol. iii, pp. 458, 459. 
^ Ihid., vol. iii, p. 392. 



282 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

distribution," Marx criticised that program bitterly 
and asked in derision : What is " just distribution " ? 
Does not the bourgeoisie regard the present mode of 
distribution as " just "? And is it not, as a matter of 
fact, the only ** just " distribution on the basis of the 
existing mode of production? Does not every social- 
ist sect have different conceptions as to what may 
constitute a " just " distribution? The law governing 
distribution is dependent upon its economic basis and 
cannot be of a higher type than the economic develop- 
ment of society may justify.^ For the so-called ideas 
of eternal justice Marx had a distinct aversion, for 
two obvious reasons. First of all, these ideas were 
but touched-up and beautified reflections of very tem- 
porary conditions. So he wrote about the Utopian 
schemes of the English socialist Bray : " Mr. Bray 
does not see that this equalitarian relation, this cor- 
rective ideal, which he wishes to apply to the world, is 
itself nothing but the reflection of the existing world, 
and that it is in consequence quite impossible to recon- 
stitute society on a basis which is only an embellished 
shadow. In proportion as this shadow becomes sub- 
stance, it is seen that this substance, far from being 
the dreamed-of transfiguration, is nothing but the body 
of existing society." ® The other objection of Marx 
to the appeal to justice as a means of reconstructing 
society, is that this appeal, while interesting and symp- 

* Die Neue Zeit, 1890, vol. i, pp. 565, 566. 

* The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 53. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS 283 

tomatic, is as a whole utterly futile. Have we not 
heard that appeal, asked Marx, for eighteen hundred 
years, and what is the net result ? ^^ 

A clever advocate of orthodox Marxism, Dr. Lux- 
emburg, calls the principle of justice the good old 
Rosinante, upon which every Don Quixote of the 
world's history has taken a ride, to return home finally 
with nothing but a black eye to show for his trouble. ^^ 

This attitude of Marx and Engels is expressed in 
unmistakable language in every important work of 
theirs, in their earlier as in their later writings. En- 
gels emphasizes it clearly in his Anti-Duehring. "If 
we have no better security for the revolution in the 
present methods of distribution of the products of 
labor, with all their crying antagonisms of misery and 
luxury, of poverty and ostentation, than the conscious- 
ness that this method of distribution is unjust and that 
justice must finally prevail, we should be in evil plight 
and would have to stay there a long time. The mys- 
tics of the Middle Ages, who dreamed of an approach- 
ing thousand-years kingdom of righteousness, had the 
consciousness of the injustice of class antagonisms. 
At the beginning of modern history three hundred 

^° Literarischer Nachlass, vol. ii, p. 416. 

^^ " Then we fortunately arrived at the principle of justice, 
at that old horse ridden for many thousands of years by all 
world-reformers in default of surer historical means of locomo- 
tion, at the clattering Rosinante, on which all the Don Quixotes 
of history have ridden forth to reform the world, only to return 
home finally with nothing to show but a black eye." Luxem- 
burg, Sosialreform oder Revolution (1899), P* 45* 



284 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

years ago, Thomas Muenzer shouted it aloud to all 
the world. In the English and French bourgeois revo- 
lutions, the same cry was heard and died ineffectu- 
ally/^ . . . This appeal to morality and justice does 
riot bring us a step further scientifically. Economic 
science can find no grounds of proof in moral indig- 
nation, however justifiable, but merely a symptom. 
. . . The feeling stirred up by the poets, whether in 
picturing these social wrongs or by attack upon them 
or, on the other hand, by denial of them and the glori- 
fication of harmony in the interests of the dominant 
class, is quite timely, but its slight value of furnishing 
proof for a given period is shown by the fact that one 
finds an abundance of it in every epoch." ^^ 

I might go on quoting ad infinitum from Marx and 
from Engels, but their point of view is quite clear. 
And how could Marx's attitude towards the " appeal 
to justice" be different? His fundamental proposi- 
tion was that all legal and political institutions, all 
ideologies, all our ideas of justice, etc., are dependent 
on the economic basis. Development of economic 
conditions, shifting of the economic basis, will affect 
and change prevailing ideas of law and justice. It 
is the economic conditions, the forces of production, 
that drive society and influence individuals ; our ideas 
of good and evil are but products of these basic forces. 

^^ Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism (Anti-Dueh- 
ring), pp. 182, 183. Cf. also pp. 123, 127, 128, 131. 
'' Ibid., p. 180. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS 285 

How then could Marx turn about and expect that 
these ideologies, which are subject to constant change, 
should influence, much less reconstruct, the basic eco- 
nomic conditions? Marx could not assume the sov- 
ereign rule of forces of production, he could not 
assume that our future is definitely revealed to us by 
economic tendencies, and yet grant that these economic 
tendencies are mere clay to be modeled by an ideo- 
logical conception of our own. 

" Eternal " justice was to Marx an object of de- 
rision. The ideas of justice are constantly changing, 
changing from time to time, from people to people. 
Our ideas of social justice are quite different from 
those of the Roman world, different from those of 
the feudal world, different even from those of our 
grandfathers; and those that will be held by our 
grandchildren are bound to be different from ours. 
These ideas change with the changes in the economic 
conditions. Righteous indignation may accompany 
profound economic changes, but it does not produce or 
create those changes. That is why Marx expected his 
socialism and his social revolution to be the result of 
the development of economic forces — a development 
indicated and revealed to us by the existing economic 
tendencies, tendencies that lead to the " expropriation 
of the expropriators," the social revolution, and the 
new social order. 

In a preceding chapter I tried to point out how 
much Marx overestimated the significance of his eco- 



286 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

nomic interpretation of history.^* It has other more 
fundamental faults. Even granting that all changes 
in our ideologies are produced by economic changes, 
the ideologies themselves are by no means explained. 
Granted that economic conditions influence and affect 
religious beliefs, the theory does not account for re- 
ligious beliefs as such. To take a more concrete and 
simple example : let us grant that economic conditions 
are responsible for the longer legs of the western-plain 
horseback Indian and for the shorter legs of the east- 
ern canoe Indian; the existence of legs as such, short 
or long, is still hardly explained by economic condi- 
tions. At best, therefore, only the change of a given 
thing can be explained by the change of the economic 
conditions, but not the thing itself. If that is true, 
who is to tell us how much of the development is due 
to the inner momentum or life of the thing itself, 
quite independently of all economic conditions ? 

The profound influence of economic forces no in- 
telligent man will deny. We are quite prepared to 
admit that, in so far as forecasts of the future are at 
all legitimate, such forecasts or rather approximate 
estimates are possible only upon the basis of economic 
tendencies, provided, however, the conservative influ- 
ence of deeply rooted traditions is not overlooked. 

We have seen that our economic tendencies do not 
justify the expectation of a collapse of the capitalist 
mode of production, nor do they herald the coming 

'* Pp. 33-41. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS 287 

of a socialist commonwealth. This has become quite 
obvious to all the serious and open-minded socialists 
of Europe. They were socialists and Marxists; they 
accepted the propositions of Marx because his keen 
analytical critique eliminated all previous Utopian 
schemes and all other types of socialism. They ac- 
cepted Marx's very plausible statement that the eco- 
nomic tendencies he described must lead to socialism. 
But these tendencies have not persisted. For example, 
no one in his senses can assume that an increasing 
number of independent and well-to-do farmers pre- 
sages the coming of socialism. Such a tendency is 
making a socialist commonwealth less possible than 
ever. 

We have seen that there was actually not a tendency 
left to which socialists who were willing to look 
squarely at facts could pin their faith. More than 
that, the Marxian doctrine had become a trap for so- 
cialism; the clear-headed knew, the many felt, that 
this doctrine, to use the Marxian phraseology, '' from 
a means of development had turned into a fetter." 
If it is only through the inevitable economic tendencies 
that we can be led to socialism, and if such tendencies 
begin to indicate anything but socialism, then social- 
ism is not to be reached at all. 

Is this not precisely what the successor and follower 
of Marx, Karl Kautsky, himself said? Did he not 
tell us, in his Erfurter Programm, that so long as a 
peasant remains a peasant he will adhere, no matter 



288 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

how ill he may fare, to private ownership of the means 
of production ? ^^ Did not this same Kautsky, in at- 
tacking Bernstein, clearly formulate the situation? In 
discussing Bernstein's facts and figures in 1898 he 
made this admission : " If they are true, then not only 
is the day of our victory postponed, but we can never 
reach our aim. If capitalists are on the increase and 
not the propertyless, then development is setting us 
back further and further from our goal, then capital- 
ism intrenches itself and not socialism, then our hopes 
will never materialize." ^^ 

Bernstein was quite right in his figures, and Kautsky 
was quite right in his statement. It meant that the 
great system of scientific socialism, which Marx had 
built up with so rnuch learning and acumen, had be- 
come an arsenal of arguments against the coming of 
socialism. Who could deny that Marx's realistic 
theory was the terrific force which organized, up- 
lifted, unified the socialist movement throughout the 
world? Precisely this very force had now turned 
against international revolutionary socialism. 

The spokesmen and thinkers of scientific socialism 
have realized the situation, and for them the last dec- 
ade or so has been a period of attempts to escape 
from an untenable position. First of all, attempts 
were made to interpret Marx, to tone him down, to 
twist his statements so that they might not contradict 

^^ Kautsky, Erfurter Programm (1892), p. 180. 
^^ Protokoll der Stuttgarter Parteitags, 1898, p. 128. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS 289 

too glaringly the very obvious facts. Nearly all the 
surviving orthodox Marxists belonged to this category. 
But theirs was a losing fight. It was a slow retreat 
before the incoming tide of revisionism. 

Revisionists call themselves socialists, they are mem- 
bers of the Socialist party; and, if not to-day, then 
to-morrow, they will control the theoretical platform 
of the German Socialist party as completely as 
they already control its practical policies. Barring 
Kautsky, nearly every socialist scholar of merit be- 
longs to that wing; barring Bebel, who has often sided 
with them, nearly every practical leader of note is 
actually a revisionist, whether or not he accepts the 
designation. Of socialism they have preserved only 
the name; they are social reformers. Bernstein, who 
inaugurated the revisionist movement, frankly admits 
in his book, Die Voraussetmmgen des Socialismus, 
that the goal of socialism — the socialist common- 
wealth — means nothing to him, while the social move- 
ment means everything. 

Bernstein has grave doubts whether the state can 
ever take over the great industries. In fact, he gives 
excellent reasons why they can not be taken over by 
the state ; ^^ and he points out how utterly impossible 

^''"Can the state take over world industries? What would 
that mean? Can the modern state take possession of industries 
whose business is in large part of a speculative nature, — in- 
dustries which with their products and their possibilities enter 
the world market as competitors, and in the struggle for sale 
and commissions develop all the fine qualities of modern com- 



290 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

it would be for workingmen to take over what the 
state cannot possibly handle. Industries expropriated 
in a revolution would prove to be empty shells, utterly 
worthless to the revolutionary proletariat. 

It is obvious that this is the point of view of a social 
reformer. It would be a misnomer to call it socialism, 
were it not for the fact that there is no room left for 
real socialism in our present-day economic develop- 
ment. 

petition? If the state neither will nor can do this, are these 
industries, which play so great a part in modern economic life, 
which together employ armies of laborers, and on whose exist- 
ence the well-being of a great part of the population depends, 
are they in a social catastrophe to be delivered over to ruin 
simply because the state cannot take them over? Quite other 
means and quite different methods must be employed to bring 
them gradually under stronger control by the state, which can 
only slowly and by degrees become master of the situation. 
During a very real revolutionary movement the workingmen 
in the Russian industrial centers have become only too well 
aware of it. ... If I am not mistaken, Kautsky, in the state- 
ment which he made here in Holland concerning the beginning 
of the revolution, developed the idea that the voluntary aban- 
doning of the factories by the manufacturers would be one of 
the first results of the revolution of the laboring class, and 
that the manufacturers would say, 'Very well; take the fac- 
tories away, but leave us alone.* Truly this is very possible, 
and I admit that such an expropriation would be very cheap. 
The only question is whether the workingmen shall or can take 
over the factories, of which the state cannot take charge, and 
carry them on with success. And after all that we have hereto- 
fore seen, we are forced to the conclusion that workmen neither 
will nor can assume control of the factories. In a revolution 
the factories thus cheaply expropriated would be mere empty 
husks." Bernstein, Der Revisionismus in der Socialdemokratie 
(Amsterdam, 1909), pp. 23-25. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS 291 

Interesting is the history of another distinguished 
Marxist leader, Peter von Struve. He introduced 
Marxism into Russia and, together with Tugan- 
Baranowsky, became one of the chief exponents of 
Marxism in that country. Struve had to pass through 
precisely the same development as Bernstein. Their 
views to-day are very much alike; but while Bernstein 
is the leader of the " Socialists " in Germany, Struve 
does not call himself any longer a socialist, but is one 
of the leaders of the Constitutional Democratic party. 
In their theory, in their hopes for the future, in their 
practical policies, these two men are as alike as two 
peas; but one is called a socialist, the other a Liberal 
Democrat. Twenty years ago both of them were 
revolutionary socialists. If we turn to Italy, we find 
the same situation. The venerable Professor Ferri, 
who for decades led the Italian socialists as a scholar 
and a politician, found himself compelled to admit 
that socialism had lost its meaning; and since he was 
not willing to call himself a Marxian socialist when 
he had become a social reformer, he frankly abandoned 
both socialism and his party. 

But there is no necessity to cite luminaries and 
great leaders. What is true about them, is true about 
the every-day socialist worker. Mr. Walling, an 
ardent revolutionary socialist, writes in his recent 
book : " There can be no doubt that Socialist reform- 
ism has become very widespread. . . . It is doubt- 
less true, as Mr. Gompers says, that the individuals 



292 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

he questioned have practically abandoned their So- 
cialism, even though they remain members of the 
Socialist parties." ^^ 

Whether they call themselves revisionists, reform- 
ists, laborites or plain socialists, whether they go on 
respecting the old melodramatic phrases or not, the 
overwhelming majority of the socialists of to-day are 
tending to be reformers. Their Marxian training does 
not permit them to be Utopians, and the faith in social- 
ism as an inevitable economic necessity is rapidly 
evaporating, the economic facts being what they are. 

On the other hand, revisionism, which amounts to 
social reform, to gradual betterment, with hope for 
the future but without any promises as to the final out- 
come, has failed to satisfy those who have expected 
an immediate and final solution of the social problem. 
Temperamentally irreconcilable to mere social reform, 
yet admitting the untenability of scientific socialism, 
they required a different revision of Marx. Men of 
this fanatical temperament had to become revolution- 
ary revisionists, and this temperamental demand has 
been supplied in the Latin countries by the so-called 
" syndicalism." 

George Sorel, Ed. Berth, Leone, Labriola, and other 
syndicalists are very interesting critics of Marx, and 
I am sorry that I cannot find room for their criticisms 
in this study. To me, however, syndicalism seems 
more interesting than important. Acutely disturbing 
*^ Walling, Socialism as It Is, p. 121. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS 293 

as the movement may be, it is, in my opinion, very 
ephemeral. In fact, its leaders Sorel and Berth 
have already abandoned it and exchanged it for 
— monarchism ! When invited to an Italian Syndical- 
ist Congress in December, 19 10, M. Sorel replied that, 
in his opinion, syndicalism had not realized what was 
expected from it. Many hoped that the future w^ould 
correct the evils of the present hour, he said, but he 
felt himself too old to live in distant hopes; and he 
had decided to employ the remaining years of his life 
in the deeper study of other questions which keenly 
interested the cultivated youth of France. ^^ 

Now that the socialist parties have become in reality 
reform parties, they may become even tamer than they 
are to-day; but why should they give up the old 
phrases ? Talk about the " social revolution " may 
sound fantastic, in view of the existing economic 
conditions and tendencies, but it is more than talk. 
The inevitable cataclysm and the social revolution 
have a mystical quality, and hence they are assets. 
A social movement that is quite sensible, quite reason- 
able, is the wildest of all Utopias. Such a movement 
can no more keep alive without faith, than faith can 
keep alive without miracles, wrought or prophesied. 
The social revolution that is to come has all the essen- 
tial characteristics of the standard miracle : it is to be 
sudden, and it is to be final. What element of the 
miraculous would there be in a slow but steady con- 

" Levine, The Labor Movement in France, pp. 151, 152. 



294 MARXISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 

valescence? And how unsatisfactory a miraculous 
cure would be if it had to be repeated! Social reform 
cannot arouse the passionate ardor that is kindled by 
the apocalyptic vision of the social cataclysm. The 
road to social reform is flat and dusty; the journey 
along it is hard and dull. It is a wise instinct, there- 
fore, that moves the socialists who have become social 
reformers to cling to the earlier vision and intone, as 
of old, their imprecatory psalms. But the contrast 
between their policies and their theories, between what 
they do and what they say, tempts one to say of them, 
inverting the Biblical quotation : " The hands are the 
hands of Jacob, but the voice is the voice of Esau." 



INDEX 



Adams, Chas. F., 165 
Adams, John, 164 
Adams, T. S., 140, 142, 144 
Agriculture, ix, 57 f ., 62 ff ., 70, 

207, 211 ff. 
concentration of, 57 ff., 66 
decentralization of, ix, 65 f. 

Andler, Ch., 113 
AsstQtie*.256 f. 
Ashley, Lord, 102 
Ashley, W. J., n, I33 ff- 
Aveling, 21 

Babeuf, 154, 161 f., 202, 245 

Bacon, Fr., 173 

Baudeau, 159 

Bauer, B., 278 

Bebel, 87, 204, 241 

Becker, J. P., 58, 64, 124 

Bernstein, Ed., 67, 93, 96, 126, 

215 f., 231, 288 f. 
Berth, 293 

Blake, William, 42, 43 
Blanc, Louis, 149, 211 
Blanqui, 202, 245 
Bohm-Bawerk, i, 270 ff. 
Bouniatian, 239 
Bourgeoisie, 16-18, 34 ff., 192, 

208, 226 
Bowley, 138-9 
Bracke, 99 
Brandt, 38 
Bray, 282 
Bronterre, 161 
Buonarroti, 161 
Burnell, A. C, 205 
Bush, W. T., 41 

Cabet, 202 
Cairnes, 103-4 
Calvin, 39 
Campanella, T., 82 



Cancrin, Count, 80 
Capitalist production, 226 

achievements of, 16 ff. 

aera of, 35 

collapse of ... X, 6, 22, 
86, 232 ff., 250 f ., 290 
Cataclysm, x, 22, 232 ff., 250 f . 
Centralization of capital, 85 ff. 
Chapman, M. W., 108 
Charles I, 31 
Classes, 16, 18 

revolutionary, 173 

abolition of, 193, 195 ff. 
Class-consciousness, xi, 18, 23 
Class doctrines, 186 
Class interests, 213 f. 
Class struggle, xi, 16 ff., 74, 
150 ff., 181 ff., 190 ff., 196 ff., 
249 

intensity of . . . 213 ff. 

in America, 216 ff. 
Class struggles and classes, ab- 
olition of, 193 
Commercial crises, x, 21 ff., 

116, 226 ff. 
Common interests, 215-16 
Commons, J. R., 218 ff., 223 
Concentration of production^ 
18, 47, 52, 55 ff. 

in agriculture, 57 ff., (£ 
Conrad, J., ^2, 73, 244 
Considerant, 148 ff., 202 
Constitutional position of cap- 
ital, 223 
Cremieux, 211 
Crothers, S. M., 145, 235 f. 

Darwin, 188-9 
David, 68, 127 
Decentralization of agriculture, 

ix, 65 ff. 
De Leon, 29, 82, 199 



295 



296 



INDEX 



De I'Eure, Dupont, 211 
Despotism as a revolutionary 

policy, 195 
Dialectic method, 251-2 
Dictatorship of the proletariat, 

vii, 193 f •, 195 ff-, 245 f . 
Diehl, 255, 278 
Dietzgen, J., 64 

Eccarius, J. S., 59 

Economic interpretation of his- 
tory, vi-vii, X, xiii, xiv, 6, 
lo-ii, 25 ff., 39 f-, 44-45, 
246 ff., 251, 286 ff. 

Economic tendencies, 211 f., 
225, 234, 239, 287 

Eden, Sir Frederick, 75 

Ellis, E. J, 43 

Enfentin, 152 

Engels, F., xi, 5, 8, 14, 21, 2Z, 
25, 28, 29, 34, 39, 40, 45, 57, 
63 f., 84, 122, 129 f., 151, 
183, 189 f., 197, 227 f ., 22>7 f., 
244, 248, 253, 264, 272, 

Espinas, 162 

Expropriation of the means of 
production, 6, 22, 86, 290 



Farmer class, 58, 60, 62 f ., 69, 

207, 211 ff. 
Ferri, 291 

Feuerbach, L., 44, 172 ff., 181 
Fisher, P., 7 
FloQon, 211 
Fourier, 113, 150, 202 
Fourniere, 162 
Foxwell, 3 
Free trade, 249 
Freiligrath, 243 f . 
Future organization of society, 

23 

Giffen, Sir Robert, 122, 135-7 
Goethe, 32, 99, 163, 224 
Gompers, 291 
Goodnow, xiv 
Goshen, Viscount, 91 f. 
Griin, K., 173, 180, 182-3 
Guild system, 71 f. 



Guizot, 13, 152, 153, 188, 194 
Gutenberg, 204 

Hadley, 224 

Haller, L. v., 166 ff. 

Hammacher, 244, 252 

Harris, 103 

Hauptmann, 131 

Hegel, no, 188-9, I9i> 248, 

279 
Heine, 131 
Hepner, 241 
Herwegh, G., 179 
Hertz, Fr., 67 
Hess, M., 173, 179-80, 181 
Hughan, 239 
Hutten, Ulrich, 36 

Increasing misery, ix, 19, 98 ff. 
Industrial reserve army, iii ff. 
Industrial revolution, 78, 99 ff., 

Ill 
International, 58 f., 123 
Iron law of wages, 99 ff., no 

James, William, 41 
Jefferson, 165 
Jones, E., 243 
Just distribution, 281-2 

Kant, 243 

Kautsky, K., 23, 61, 63, 68 f., 
71, 97, 145, 149, 151, 188, 
200, 221 f., 233 ff., 250, 
287 ff. 

Kisseleff, Count, 80 

Kriege, H., 279 

Kugelman, 188 

Labriola, 149, 188 
La f argue, 64 
Lange, F. A., 189 
Langsdorff, v., 130 
Lassalle, 99 f., no 
Lea, H. C., 36 ff. 
Lengerke, A. v., 129 
Leontyeff, 168 
Leo X, 36 

Le Rossignol, 3, 25, 99 
Leroux, P., 2 
Lescure, 239 
Levasseur, 140 



INDEX 



297 



Levi, L., 122 

Levine, 293 

Lewis, 84 

Liebknecht, 26, 27, 59 f., 241 

Linguet, 159-60 

Loria, 205, 265 

Louis Philippe, 208, 211 

Louis Napoleon, 29, 60, 82, 199, 

208 fif., 211 
Louis XIV, 31 
Liining, 175 
Luther, 36 ff., 169 ff. 
Luxemburg, R., 250, 283 

MacCrosty, 53-54 
Madison, James, 163 
Mallock, W. H., 99 
Malthus, i.ox,,.in, 189^ 
Manu, Laws of, 205 
Martineau, H., 107, 114 
Masaryk, T., 30, 252 
Mediaeval industry, 71 ff. 
Mehring, F., 126 
Melanchthon, 170 
M'enger, 3, 113 
Merivale, 1 12-13 
Mohl, R. v., 102 
Moody, Wm. Vaughn, 216 
More, Th., xi f. 
Morris, William, 43 
Muenzer, Thomas, 284 
Murner, T., 38 

Nicholas I, 80 
Nichols, Sir George, 77 

Overproduction, 20, 226 ff. 
Owen, R., 202 

Paris Commune, 247 
Pecqueur, 48, 49, 149 
Permanent revolution, 193 
Petty, Sir Wm., 128 
Philosophy of revolution, 

184 ff., 245 
Plekhanoff, 152 
Political philosophy, 185 f. 
Political power, 193 
conquest of . . . vii, 23, 

119, 194 f., 2451 
Price, 259-60 



Profit, average rate of, 264 
Proletariat, 18, 23, 60, 70 f ., 79, 

82 ff., 176 ff., 192-3 ff., 213, 

260 
American, 220 f . 
Leadership of, 218 
Proletarization of the farmer 

class, ix, 50, 60 f ., 63 ff., 70 
Proletarization of the masses, 

22, 23, 70 ff. 
Proudhon, 190 
Piitmann, 45 

Rae, 3 

Rau, K. H., 102 
Rauchberg, 35 
Reformation, 34 ff. 
Revisionism, v, xi, 292 
Revolution — French, 152 ff., 
160 ff. 

French, February, 208 ff. 

German, 172 ff., 184 

Industrial, 78, 99 ff., ill 

Permanent, 193 

Social, X, 22, 232 ff., 250 f . 

Philosophy of, 184 ff., 

245 
methods of . . . 193 ff., 

245 f. 
Paris Commune, 247 

Revolutionary illusions ad- 
mitted, 253 

Revolutionary terrorism, 195 

Ricardo, no, 255, 264, 279 

Richter, 130 

Rodbertus, 230, 265 

Rollin, Ledru, 211 

Rucherath, J., 40 

Ruge, A., 182, 183 

Ruskin, 3 

St. Augustine, 39 
St. Just, 154 
Saint-Simon, 152 
St. Thomas, 39 
Sanial, 240 
Schanz, '/2 
Schapiro, 171 
Schiller, 162 
Schippel, 68 



298 



INDEX 



Schonlank, 62, 126 

Schultze-Gaevernitz, 47, 100 f. 

Schwedler, 131 

Scientific socialism, vi, vii, xi, 
6, II, 13 ff., 39 

Scotus Erigena, 39 

Seligman, E. R. A., i, 30-31, 
43, 50-51, 67 

Senior, N., 108, 112, 123, 281 

Shaw, Bernard, 8 

Simkhovitch, xv, 169, 202, 203, 
244 

Simons, 164 

Sismondi, S. de, 113, 149, 227 

Slavery as an economic neces- 
sity, 280 f . 

Smith, Monroe, xv, 176 

Smith, _E. J., 54 

Social justice, xi, 3, 8, 9 ff., 50, 
184, 278 ff. 

Social revolution, vi f., 15, 23, 
228, 241 ff., 293 

Solidarity of classes, 199 ff., 212 

Solncev, 132-3 

Sombart, i, 11, 56, 79, 83, 236 

Sorel, 293 

Sorge, 64 

Spargo, 243 

Spinoza, 29, 175, 199 

Stammler, i, 31, 252 

Standard of living, past, 74 ff., 

lOlff. 

present, 131 ff. 
Stein, L. v., 174 ff. 
Stirling, 106 
Stone, N. S., 15 
Struve, P. v., 127, 178, 252, 291 
Sumner, 142-4 
Surplus value, 262 ff. 
Syndicalism, v, xi, 292 



Szeliga, 278 

Tcherkesoff, W., 148, 149 
Ten-hour bill, 281 
Theory of population, no ff. 
Theory of value, 2ff., 254 ff., 

278 
Theory of wages, 99-100, 11 1- 

19, 275-6 
Thompson, W., 3, 202 
Townsend, J., 107 
Trade unionism in America, 

221 ff. 
Trusts, 22, 53 ff. 
Tugan-Baranowsky, 203, 236, 

239 

Untermann, 252 

Ure, A., 108, no, in f., 123 

Utopian socialism, xi, 4, 8, 11 

Vidal, 149 

Von der Goltz, 130 

Wage-fund theory, 103 ff. 
Wagner, Adolph, 2, 87 
Walling, 291 
Ward, L. P., 188 
Webb, 105-7, 136, 137 
Weitling, 202, 247 
Wernicke, J., 57 
Wilde, Oscar, 43 
Willich, 253 

Woerishoffer, Carola, xv 
Wolf, J., II f. 
Wolff, J. W., loi 
Woltman, 30 
Wright, C. D., 141 ff. 

Zablocki-Dessyatkovski, 80 



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